IT says much about Marco Gentile that when Burnley played Watford this afternoon, he planned on being at Vicarage Road, writes BRIAN DOOGAN.

An injury deep in his groin prevented the Dutchman from being on the playing side of the touchline.

But he wanted to be there in the stadium, to feel the emotion, to experience the start of what promises to be an exciting new era for Burnley for his heart is with the club and their trek through the Second Division.

Any doubt about that disintegrated on the journey back to Turf Moor after an enjoyable afternoon spent in his company.

A Burnley fan on the sidewalk, sporting a Clarets jersey, caught his eye and prompted him to declare: "There, that is what I love about English football.

"Walking through a town in Holland, you would never see a supporter wearing the shirt of his club.

"Here you see so many.

"It is fantastic. It shows the passion."

Passion is something any man with Italian blood in him should be able to identify.

And it is the at the very essence of why Gentile decided to turn down the chance of regular action in the Dutch First Division, campaigning against the likes of Ajax and PSV Eindhoven, to play in the English Second Division instead.

The fact he thought that Burnley were in the First may explain why he accepted the move so readily.

But the reality didn't dissuade him. Even to an outsider, it is easy to recognise the potential of a club that averages one of the highest attendance figures in the division with an infrastructure that is firmly embedded in the town.

"I'm not too great for the Second Division," concluded Gentile. He might not be too self-important for the division but anyone once described by dreadlocked Dutchman Ruud Gullit as one of the finest uncapped defenders in the Netherlands is certainly good enough.

Modesty, however, sits easily with the 28-year-old whose father Corrado moved to Holland to work in an escalator factory because there was no work to be found in his native Italy.

It was in Den Haag, the seat of the Dutch parliament and palatial home of Queen Beatrix, that Gentile was born along with brother Reza, a train conductor, and sisters Nattalie, an office secretary, and Jossee, who is still at school.

"It is a seaside town, the third largest in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam with a population of nearly half a million," he said.

"Many tourists come each year and there is a large population of Turks, Morrocans and Pakistanis in the city who live in their own area."

Marco became enchanted by football and the all-conquering, total football demonstrated so eloquently by Cruyff, Neeskens and Johnny Rep.

In a straight fight between football and school, there could only be one winner.

"I didn't like school at all, which I shouldn't say because it sets a bad example," said Gentile, remembering that his six-year-old twins, Rowen, a boy, and Larisse, a girl, have to be taught the importance of getting a good education.

"It is really bad to say that now because we are trying to find a school for the twins in Worsley, near Manchester, where we live, and it is not easy.

"Most of the schools in England are now full.

"Classrooms have already got 30 or 40 children in them which is too much.

"But when I was at school, I would rather be somewhere else.

"At homework time I usually was!"

And usually it was in the streets or on the large field near Marco's house where a dozen or more youngsters would try to emulate their illustrious elders.

But before Gentile could do that full-time, he had to come through 14 months of national service, an experience he describes now as "terrible".

"I finished my diploma at 17 and joined the army and it was not nice," he said in English that is rapidly improving - just as well in order to understand this Irish reporter. "You were bored all day. You did nothing. It was a waste of time.

"That's the reason it's finished - there is no longer national service in Holland."

The one redeeming aspect of his time in the army is that he could drive, unusual at the time for someone of 17.

"It was my luck I had a license," he reflected.

"I would drive soldiers from one place to another, one place to another. But at least I was driving!

"There were some exercises, of course, too.

"We would have to enter a gas-filled room with gas masks on.

"I didn't like that. I didn't like my time in the army at all."

Thankfully, his football talent offered an attractive escape route.

He joined his home team and played there for eight years, ironically, for a spell alongside Tony Morley, the former England international, who played for Burnley between 1975 and 1978 before returning to the club a decade later.

For the past two seasons he has played for MVV Maastricht, who won the Second Division championship in their most recent campaign, earning them the right to compete with the big boys of Dutch football.

"Some of my friends said to me I was wrong to walk away from that to play football in the English Second Division," said Gentile.

"But it is my choice and I think I have made the right one."

Within weeks of making that choice, Adrian Heath, the then Burnley manager, linked up again with friend and mentor Howard Kendall at Everton, leaving a potential void at Turf Moor and room for doubt in Gentile's mind.

The arrival of Chris Waddle rectified that.

"Chris Waddle is very well-known in Holland and, from what I have seen, will be as good a coach as he was a footballer," remarked Gentile.

"Everyone at the club is looking forward to the season getting under way and us doing well. We know we can."

The Gentile family's sole concern is the quarantining of the pet dog.

He will be released for Christmas by which time Gentile and Burnley should be well on their way.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.