Zinedine Zidane says Florentino Pérez asked him to join Real Madrid via a note in a napkin | OneFootball

Speaking with L’Équipe in a wide-ranging interview to mark his 50th birthday, Zinedine Zidane discussed his move to Real Madrid from Juventus, explaining that Madrid president Florentino Pérez asked him if he would like to move to Real via a note wrapped in a tissue at a gala dinner in Monaco:

“We [Pérez and I] were at a large table in Monaco for a gala dinner but we weren’t sitting next to each other. I was invited to receive an award, there he hands me a serviette. Inside was written: ‘Do you want to join?’ And I answered him on a piece of paper: ‘Yes’. I still wonder why I answered him in English! I could have put ‘oui’, since he speaks French, or ‘si’ in Spanish, but I put ‘yes’. It went from there… There was no second or third date to make things happen… Florentino Pérez is a man who does not joke. When he says: ‘We’re going to do it’, he does it.”

On his now iconic number five Madrid shirt, Zidane said: