'Completely slow-mo' - Arsenal and Chelsea legend reveals his shocking Real Madrid discovery after sneaking into Santiago Bernabeu

The famous Czech goalkeeper has spoken of his surprise at the tempo of a Madrid training session he witnessed in his younger days. Then, when he was playing for Sparta Prague in the 2001/02 season, the ex-Arsenal stopper and his goalkeeping coach snuck into the stadium to watch the Spanish giants train ahead of a Champions League tie. What they saw left them baffled.

Cech was keen to stress that every coach and player has their own methods, but what he saw from the Madrid players was a world away from what he expected, particularly given the magnitude of the upcoming fixture - a game they lost 3-0 in the Champions League. The former goalkeeper went on to discuss other differences he'd noted between goalkeeping cultures during his long and distinguished career.

He said on the Fozcast: "It was completely slow-mo, like everything had a really easy slow pace.  So every time you know, the catch was about easy technique, easy dive, easy catch and the motion like it was only about like slow motion…So we were watching about 15-20 minutes and then we were like, okay…maybe…even we were like, okay so that's…we don’t see anything, yeah we haven’t…A part of a completely different approach, which we would never do. We were like, Okay, this is what they do, fine. Uh, but we we we don’t really see something that would surprise us or we would learn something from it. So we were like, okay, it was quite cold, so we were like, okay, let’s go, let’s go to the hotel."

Now retired, Cech has more time to reflect on his experiences within the game. Meanwhile, Madrid will continue their quest for silverware in the Copa del Rey and La Liga this season.