How Palermo beat Real Madrid to signing Kjaer
- Kaustubh Pandey
Now 28, Kjaer joined Sevilla this past summer from Fenerbahce for a fee in the region of 12 million euros. The defender has played for a host of clubs since he was a promising youngster of 18 at Midtjylland and that list includes Wolfsburg, Roma and Lille. Real Madrid could have been in that list too, if Midtjylland hadn’t rejected their offer.
Miguel Angel Portugal, the man who first discovered him at Real Madrid, talked about Kjaer in the summer to Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet. He said: "Madrid invited him to a trial training and then offered some 600,000 euros for his pass, but the Danish club wanted more.”
Normally, moments like these change players’ careers. Kjaer feels otherwise. He says: "I had the chance to be a Real Madrid player, yes, at that moment I did not understand why Midtjylland did not want to, but afterwards I did not lose a single moment of my career in worrying.”