Dani Alves has revealed he was '95 per cent close to signing with Real Madrid' before leaving Sevilla for Barcelona... and Chelsea even tried to make a move for him too.
The Brazilian has been one of the world's greatest full backs for over a decade, winning multiple honours at Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain.
However, his career almost took a completely different turn after he admitted he was on the brink of signing for Real from Sevilla. Alves eventually moved to the Nou Camp in 2008 and never looked back.
In an interview with ESPN, Alves said: 'I'll be honest with you, I was 95 per cent close to signing with Real Madrid. However, [former Sevilla president Jose Maria] Del Nido is a very tough dude. Chelsea also got involved [in talks] and they started to play along.
'He dealt with one side and he told them that the other team was willing to pay even more money than them. Then I had to make a decision and in the end, I stayed with Sevilla.
'I was very close to signing with Real Madrid, but fate got in the way. It said that my history was going to be made with Barcelona, as I had dreamed as a kid. And you have to make dreams come true, instead of nightmares.
'I'm grateful that I was able to avoid going to Madrid and, obviously, signing with Barca. Real was a winning side and I wasn't going to go there in order to keep the status quo.
'It was more exciting for me to build what we did in Barcelona. We had to change history and so we did. In Madrid, it would have been a case of adding pages to a book they had already written. Instead, with Barca it was a different thing.
'There was a transition in progress and people went to the stands carrying scarves. We changed the meaning of those scarves, made them even brighter. That was the one thing we achieved with Sevilla and Barca.'