Two ways generic soccer fans would know Diego Forlan.

1. He’s the Uruguayan forward who isn’t Luis Suarez. Forlan is the friendly one — the one who doesn’t bite.

2. Forlan seems to be considered one of the handsomest soccer players in the world.

He also won the Golden Ball (best player) at the 2010 World Cup, where he was one of four players who scored five goals as Uruguay got to the semifinals in South Africa.

And now, he also is known, in the UAE, anyway, as the veteran forward who writes a weekly column for The National.

Here was his first column, last week, about his belief that Radamel Falcao will come around for Manchester United if given enough time …

And here is his second, a look back at his times with Juan Roman Riquelme, the Argentine playmaker who this week announced his retirement. Forlan writes about how much he enjoyed playing with Riquelme for three seasons at Villareal of the Spanish League.

How is that Forlan is writing for The National?

One of the newspaper’s top correspondents is Andy Mitten, an Englishman based in Spain.

Mitten is a chronicler of Manchester United and got to know Forlan when the latter was 23 and newly arrived at ManU, in 2002.

Mitten has spent much of his time after that in Spain, where he saw Forlan play, with great success, for Villareal and Atletico Madrid.

Mitten talked to Forlan about writing a column for a newspaper, which interested Forlan, at a time when we were ready to pursue that sort of thing, and it is Mitten who has the conversations with Forlan that are turned into columns.

A year ago, we parted ways with Andrew Cole, another former United player, who had done a weekly column from the paper almost from its inception.

Cole was popular, and he was a very good player for several teams, including United. But he retired in 2008, and he never played outside England.

Forlan has played in Argentina, England, Spain, Italy, Brazil and, now, Japan, and played at three World Cups. And he is still playing, with Cerezo Osaka.

We know Forlan has had a very colorful and successful career, and we expect he will relay some of the many stories he has for the readers of The National.

We also are doing translations of his columns, for the benefit of his Spanish-language fans, in Spain and the Americas.