Real Madrid’s open training had just finished when Jude Bellingham went to the stands to greet the adoring fans and sign some T-shirts.
That prompted an avalanche of people pushing to the front to meet their hero, especially the younger children who had been watching the session.
The England midfielder took particular notice of one boy amid the scrum, who was clearly overwhelmed with excitement at the prospect of meeting Bellingham and kept patting the player on the shoulder, asking for his training top.
Bellingham stopped and spoke to the youngster, ruffling his hair with his hand and then handing over his shirt and giving him a huge hug. This reduced the kid to tears. It was a heartwarming moment.
Given the joy it brings to the fans to get up close with Madrid’s stars, some at the reigning Spanish and European champions would like to host these open training sessions more often.
At the moment it tends to be just once a year, around Christmas time, and is offered to club members and their children and grandchildren.
They are invited to the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano, in the Ciudad Deportiva (Sports City) at Madrid’s base in the Valdebebas district, to watch their idols in a full hour-long session.
The stands were full on Tuesday, with more than 5,000 people in attendance, and The Athletic was there too to take you inside a training session with the European champions…
For context, the media usually have access to only 15 minutes of open training before a typical Madrid match, with longer during their pre-season tours to the United States or the media day before a Champions League final (if they get that far — which, they often do). So this was eye-opening for us too.
The first thing that stands out is that manager Carlo Ancelotti is not the one in charge of the group, instead it is his assistants, Davide (his son) and Francesco Mauri, who give the instructions and direct the session.
Before the players arrived by bus from the training complex’s main building, they were already there, with all the exercises they would put the squad through prepared.
Next to them, fitness trainer Sebastien Devillaz was setting up a piece of equipment to measure the intensity of the exercises.
Before starting drills with the ball, all the outfield players (not the goalkeepers) began a warm-up led by fitness coach Antonio Pintus, but it lasted barely a minute.
Quickly, they divided into two groups who were then arranged in two small squares to practise combination play and finishing in a pressure situation.
The pace was slow, except for Antonio Rudiger, who made a dangerous tackle just two minutes in. It would be worth having an individual camera tracking the Germany centre-back at every training session, because he just does not stop.
During the training match, the 31-year-old had a play-fight with fellow defender Lucas Vazquez, who he ended up lifting into the air, and then he grabbed forward Rodrygo in a huge bear hug.
But not everyone was as energetic as Rudiger during the session and, in the case of Vinicius Junior, it was noticeable that he was not working at even half the intensity he would in a proper match.
This is common from the Brazil forward in training, according to members of the coaching staff.
Over on the touchline, midfielder Luka Modric joked with club legend Roberto Carlos, as they were talking to in-house channel Madrid TV.
Bellingham was among the most cheered during the training session and when he scored a goal he imitated the celebration of Madrid great Cristiano Ronaldo, jumping in the air and throwing his arms down by his sides.
A few days earlier, the pair had been sitting near one another at the Globe Soccer Awards in Dubai, where Bellingham was named best midfielder in the world.
As training continued, Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe combined well in a link-up exercise, and there was a lot of laughter between them when they missed a chance.
Soon the distance between the goals was widened to almost the middle of the pitch and the goalkeepers joined in the drills. Earlier, they had been doing specific blocking and stopping exercises in a separate goal, with trainer Luis Llopis.
In this next part of the session, we got a closer look at some of the players who may feature less during matches but possess outstanding quality. One of these was Dani Ceballos, who at one point scored three goals in the space of a minute.
Another was Arda Guler, the teenage Turkey international who improved his team’s fluidity whenever he got the ball.
Carlo Ancelotti wasn’t talking too much, but he was clearly keeping a close eye on Guler. He gave him some pointers on positioning and joked that he had simulated a foul.
The majority of the talking to rearrange the team was done by Mauri, and he also had a separate chat with Vazquez.
The biggest positive was the involvement of David Alaba, who took part for 15 minutes with the rest of the squad after more than a year out with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury.
The 32-year-old centre-back wore a different bib from the rest of the squad and played as a wildcard to avoid tackles that could jeopardise the final stage of his recovery.
Afterwards, the Austria international defender carried out separate running exercises with Madrid’s new rehab coach, Ruben Cipriano, and he received plenty of love and shouts of support from the crowd.
The last part of the session was a training match in the middle of the pitch with two teams that were a mix of starters and substitutes, and at this stage Carlo Ancelotti had more of a leading role.
In just over 20 minutes of play there were no goals and the match was actually extended to try to coax one of the sides to score so that the children in the stands could celebrate. But it still finished 0-0.
It also ended with a scare when the young Brazil forward Endrick received a blow to his right ankle as he took the last shot of the game. That caused concern among the coaching staff, and club medics treated him on the pitch.
The club later said Endrick was OK. It was an example of the commitment of the 18-year-old, who has barely featured for the first team since joining the club in the summer but who battled gamely against Rudiger during this session.
When training finished, the players filtered over to the fans to give out balls, photos and sign autographs. Eduardo Camavinga asked their audience to shout louder as if he were an orchestra conductor.
The players who stayed the longest and were most in demand were Mbappe, Vinicius Jr and Bellingham.
They were clearly the fans’ favourites — they had the most banners with their names on in the stands, for starters — and seemed happy to stay and chat with the supporters.
