Nicolas Anelka( 41 years old) left Paris Saint-Germain at Arsenal in the 1996/97 season before Real Madrid broke their piggy bank to recruit him in 1999. A transfer that should have been synonymous with glory and prestige for the Frenchman. In the end, although he did win a Champions League with the Merengues, the former Madrid player confessed in the Netflix documentary “Anelka, the Misunderstood”that his time in the Spanish capital was mostly a real ordeal. Unwelred by the dressing room, tracked down by the press, Nicolas Anelka went through hell, even if he conceded that he also sinned for youth.
“Madrid was madness. Lots of press, a lot of supporters. I understood what it was like to be a star when I arrived at Real Madrid. And I hated it. When I finish my press conference, I arrive at the locker room. I come first, I sit down. Every time there was a player coming, he would move me because he would say “this is my place”. Another came next… Maybe twenty like that. I thought, “What am I doing here? It’s going to be hostile, it’s going to be hot.” What I experienced there was the beginning of a nightmare. When you get to Real, you’re asked a lot. We’re asking you to open up. I wasn’t open. It was a handicap that weighed heavily in the balance. I wasn’t practically admitted to the team, on the field I was very, very average, I didn’t have the press with me. I did very little at Real Madrid. I would have liked to have done a lot more, but I was not so lucky. I wasn’t good either, he said. A nice mess in short.
