Nicolas Anelka has revealed the amount of hostility he faced after swapping Arsenal for Real Madrid.
The controversial French striker burst onto the world football scene in 18 months at the Gunners, netting 23 goals in 65 games before a £22.3m move to Real Madrid.
Yet he failed to replicate his Arsenal form in Spain, failing to score for Real Madrid in his first five months at the club.
In a new Netflix documentary, Anelka spoke about how difficult it was to settle in at the Bernabeu due to the hostility he faced from teammates.
Anelka said: "After the press conference, I went to the changing room.
"I got there first, sat down, but players kept coming up to me and saying: 'That’s my spot'.
"I would say: “Oh, sorry. Can I sit here?” and then another player would come up and say: 'That’s my spot'.
"It happened maybe 20 times.
"I just thought: 'What am I doing here? This is going to be hostile'.
"What I experienced that day was just the beginning of the nightmare."
He added: "Going back to training was really tough because the players were against me.
"A lot of them were out to get me on the pitch, but I came from England. I knew how to be physical.
"There were little fights and duels out on the pitch but everything fell back into place and got back to normal."
Anelka admits that, with hindsight, he would have acted differently at the Spanish giants as he lasted just a year before returning to boyhood club Paris-Saint Germain.
"I helped Real win their eighth Champions League title," he said. "I’m proud of that.
"I didn’t do much. I did very little at Real Madrid.
"I would have liked to do much more but I didn’t get the chance.
"With hindsight, if you want to play for Real Madrid, sacrifices need to be made but I was too young to understand.
"There are things I shouldn’t have said or done. It was early in my career, maybe too early.
"I didn’t know it was the only Champions League I’d win, for example."
