No list of football’s oddest transfers is ever complete without mention of Julien Faubert; the former West Ham United midfielder whose brief spell at Real Madrid amounted to a pair of La Liga appearances and a bizarre furore over an alleged nap on the Santiago Bernabeu bench.
But there was another strange plot point in this most mystifying of tales.
One involving former Liverpool, Arsenal and Birmingham City winger Jermaine Pennant, a baffling Real Madrid rejection, and an eventual short-term deal which left every Los Blancos supporter with an expression as confused as Alfredo di Stefano. The Real legend welcoming Faubert to the Spanish capital with a look bordering on bewilderment.
Real Madrid surprisingly turned to Julien Faubert in pursuit of a right-sided midfielder willing to act as a short-term back-up option during the second half of the 2009/10 season.
An opportunity the former West Ham United ace felt he could not turn down, even if Faubert knew that minutes on the pitch were likely to be few and far between.
A player who would go on to represent Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premiership was not, however, Real Madrid’s first port of call.
Jermaine Pennant snub led to Julian Faubert joining Real Madrid from West Ham United
Speaking 16 years on, Jermaine Pennant’s long-standing agent Sky Andrew opens up on how a four million euro agreement between Liverpool and Real Madrid collapsed.
And how Julien Faubert ended up filling a gap that was initially intended for a winger who finished the January 2009 transfer window not as a Real player, but a Portsmouth one.
“A lot of people don’t know this but Jermaine Pennant could have gone to Real Madrid,” Andrew recalls, the fifteen-time European champions arranging a private jet to pick him up from Merseyside.
“[Liverpool chief executive] Rick Parry called me up and said; ‘Are you sitting down? We’ve agreed a fee with Real Madrid for Jermaine’.
“I wish we would have done that deal.
“The narrative I got from the club [Real Madrid] is they were just looking for someone as a backup to sit on the bench. The more I said it to Jermaine, the more he said ‘no, I’m not sitting on the bench.’ He’s a nightmare when he’s not playing!
“In the end they signed someone from West Ham who didn’t play a game in the second half of the season.
“Thank God! [If] Jermaine had gone there and not played, it would have been a disaster.”
Faubert hit back at sleeping rumours after bizarre La Liga stint
Now, Andrew is not quite correct when he claims that Faubert ‘didn’t play a game’ in a Real Madrid shirt.
Two years after West Ham fought off Scottish giants Rangers for his signature, the one-time France international actually joined Sergio Ramos, Gonzalo Higuain, Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben, Marcelo, Raul and co on a La Liga pitch on two occasions.
Faubert made brief cameo appearances during top-flight triumphs over Racing Santander and Athletic Club.
His time as a Real Madrid player ended after only a few short months, but Faubert still took a few lifelong lessons away from a genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“I spoke with the boss at Madrid [Juande Ramos] and he said; ‘When you play for this team, you have to be careful about everything. When you talk on the pitch or the way you act’,” Faubert recalled in conversation with FourFourTwo, taking aim at the misinformation surrounding his reputation as a rather light sleeper.
“They said you’ve got 10-15 cameras always only on the bench. I just closed my eyes because I was bored for half a second and they took a picture and said I was sleeping!
“But I don’t sleep on the bench. I prefer a bed!”
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