WHEN top players look forward to FA Cup third-round weekend, it would be naïve to imagine that their first thought is that it represents one of the highlights of the football calendar. For them, it means two very exciting words — not cup upset, but mini-break.

After Chelsea’s win over West Ham United on Monday, José Mourinho gave Frank Lampard and John Terry a week off and they jetted out to Dubai. Gianfranco Zola and Roy Makaay, the Bayern Munich forward, were recently in this place on the Persian Gulf; there are rumours that David Beckham is about to arrive.

Dubai is the new holiday destination for the new kind of football superstar: the ultra-rich and famous A-list celebrity. I’ve been in Dubai for the past week on holiday, by chance staying in the same complex as Lampard and Terry — a surprise from my wife, after I won some money in a poker tournament. My career took me to a few exotic locations, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I look out of my hotel room and see a clear blue sky, a beautiful blue sea and perfect golden beaches. It’s been between 25-30C every day.

The weather, desert setting, scale of the hotels and pleasure-orientated atmosphere remind me of Las Vegas, but without the casinos, the wild partying or the downmarket edge. Here there is excess but it’s excess luxury, not decadence. Even at the cheaper end of the scale, on a package holiday as I am, the expense is mind-boggling.

Leading players are spoilt by their clubs and are well used to the best things in life but even they would probably consider the facilities to be above and beyond their norm. It would be easy to spend £20,000 in a week. I spoke to one person who paid £1,200 for dinner for four with a bottle of wine. Some restaurants are so booked up and so elitist that who you are and who you know really does matter if you want a table.

If you’ve got the money you can stay in a private villa with its own swimming pool and be waited on hand and foot by hotel staff without any need to come in contact with the public. That’s a bonus for players who, back home, can’t go to the local supermarket without being hounded for autographs.

From the clubs’ perspectives, it makes perfect sense to encourage their stars to come here. The hot sun helps to heal aches and pains and recharge batteries. The flight from London is about six hours and the time difference only four hours, so jet lag is not serious. Going with your family rather than a group of team-mates eliminates the temptation to get rowdy.

Years ago I went to Lanzarote one winter with the Millwall squad. In theory a training camp, in reality it was a piss-up. I put on half a stone and one of the players spent three weeks out injured after an unfortunate incident involving a wheelie bin and a flight of stairs.

Here in Dubai, the likes of Lanzarote and Majorca seem a world away. Of course there are nightclubs but nothing that would inspire a re-enactment of the “dentist’s chair”. No one’s going to get hammered and run around naked letting off fire extinguishers.

It’s a shame that no Huddersfield Town player will get the chance to swap shirts with Terry or Lampard today, and that the third round, like the Cup itself, does not mean as much as it used to. Still, times change, and you can see the logic behind clubs’ willingness to give their best players a break so they will be fresh for the business end of the season. And you can see why those players love to come to Dubai. This is a footballers’ playground — but one for adults.