Growing up in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies, Owen Hargreaves would often hear talk of older boys who were “going travelling” or “going backpacking”. He would scoff at the notion, saying that, despite the sub-zero temperatures, Calgary was the greatest place in the world. He would then go off to soccer practice, never giving a second thought as to what life might have in store beyond the confines of Alberta.

Sitting on a bench in a sports hall in Stretford, Manchester, in his new-found capacity as an ambassador for the Nike Football Foundation, the Manchester United midfield player laughs at what he now sees as the innocence and insularity of youth. These days, having spent ten of his 27 years at Bayern Munich, he feels confident and worldly enough to describe himself as “a global citizen”.

It is not a phrase often applied to his teammates in the England squad, who realised he was a little different during the 2006 World Cup finals when, on a rare day off, he fled the team hotel in Baden-Baden and went to see the sights of Strasbourg. Granted it was less than 40 miles away, but, still. “Heard about Hargy? He’s only gone and been to France.”

Even for this self-styled man of the world, though, the idea of Premier League games without frontiers - United taking on, say, Aston Villa in Seoul before attention turns (or not) to Fulham against Reading in Sydney – is one that he struggles to comprehend. “I think it’s difficult,” he says. “Yes it’s good to promote the league, but how much do you really need to promote the Premier League? It’s the biggest league in the world as it is.

“From the fans’ point of view, I think it’s poor because it means a lot to them and just to play games in New York or Shanghai or wherever for whatever reason - it must be money – is a shame for the people who pay to watch their team week in, week out.”

Is the proposal also unwelcome for the players, who, as we are frequently told, are already playing too many games? “If it’s one game, it depends,” Hargreaves says. “But anyone who travels knows that to fly ten hours takes a lot out of your body, especially if you’re being asked to play 90 minutes at the highest level the next day. But when you play at the highest level week in, week out – Man United, England, Champions League – the demands on your body are extreme.

“I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone to do this at the highest level for an extended period of time. The players who have been playing at this level for a long time, like Scholesy [Paul Scholes] and Giggsy [Ryan Giggs] are remarkable really.”

Hargreaves has already suffered from wear and tear in his brief United career to date, with knee and thigh injuries going some way towards restricting him to only 12 starts in the Premier League and just 11 minutes on the pitch in the Champions League (partly because he was rested for the final two group games, with his team already through).

He was outstanding in the 1-0 victory over Liverpool at Anfield in December and has got through a prodigious amount of work in other matches to allow Cristiano Ronaldo et al to parade their more flamboyant skills farther forward. However, having been substituted against Tottenham Hotspur a fortnight ago, and been on the bench for last weekend’s Manchester derby, he knows, looking ahead to this evening’s FA Cup fifth-round tie against Arsenal, that United’s supporters have still to see the best of him.

“I’ve had small injuries that I probably haven’t had in the past,” he says. “But I feel strong and hopefully I can be fit for the rest of the season. We’re not all going to play every game. It’s a benefit in a way because when you play, you’ll be sharper. I think United last season had an exceptional season but they just ran out of steam towards the end and could easily, with a couple more players, have been a dream team.”

Hargreaves was identified as one of those players, bought ostensibly to add steel to a midfield that was overrun by AC Milan in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final. He also has extensive experience in the European tournament, having won it with Bayern in 2001.

In those early years in Germany, as a fresh-faced youngster from the football backwater of Canada, he learnt a lot from sharing a dressing-room with personalities as forceful and intimidating as Lothar Matthäus, Stefan Effenberg and Oliver Kahn. “When I was there with all the top players in the first season, I don’t think I said a word really,” he says – and that was not merely because of the language barrier. “I would just sit there quietly. But it was a great experience for me. I was very happy in Munich. It’s a great place to play football.”

So too, though, is Old Trafford. He is reluctant to draw too many comparisons with life in Germany, but his words seem to indicate that the atmosphere at United is far healthier than the one at Bayern, where egos are said to abound. “It’s a great atmosphere,” he says of his new club. “It’s the best atmosphere I’ve ever been involved in at club level. It’s a fantastic group of individuals – not only as football players but as people. There’s no room for egos or big heads here.

“It can be very difficult when you get that many people who are that talented at their job from that many different places, different cultures, different languages, completely different upbringings, to try to follow one common goal, and it takes an exceptional manager to do that because it could easily go in the other direction.

“The energy here is so positive, whereas at places I’ve been before there would be a few people who would have their own agenda or talk badly about other players or they’d smash into each other in training. That’s not the case here and, from what I’m told, it will never be the case because the manager wouldn’t put up with it.”

Nor, it is presumed, would Sir Alex Ferguson put up with defeat by Arsenal this evening, but Hargreaves is rightly dismissive of the notion that United’s season may be falling apart after two games without a win. “We’re only in February,” he says. “At the end of the season we can say who was the best team this season. Right now they are in a good position, they’re in the driving seat, but they still have to come here in the league.

“I don’t think we’re behind the eight ball. Arsenal have a lot to be proud of this season because they’ve got a young team who are playing exceptionally well. But we expect to win. Those are the expectations we have of ourselves because the players put these demands on one another. That’s why I think we’ll get there in the end because we’ve got great footballers across the pitch, great winners, great personalities and we will not accept second-best.”

Community-minded

Owen Hargreaves has teamed up with Gabriel Agbonlahor, Steven Taylor and Theo Walcott to be a regional ambassador for a new community football award scheme launched by Nike and the Football Foundation. This offers an award for small community-based sports projects, led by outstanding young people in each region, with an emphasis on rewarding volunteers. For information, go to www.footballfoundation.org.uk