The Robert Jarni transfer saga remains one of the most bizarre in Premier League history.
The World Cup star joined Coventry in 1998 but never actually played any games for the club.
Jarni had just helped Croatia to a historic third place finish at France ‘98, with his most notable moment coming in the 3-0 win over Germany in the quarter-final where he scored.
Just days after completing a transfer from Real Betis, where he had lit up LaLiga, Real Madrid decided they wanted him and snapped him up.
Not surprising given he'd netted against them in a 3-2 win for Betis months earlier, while also scoring direct from a corner against Celta Vigo in the same season.
Coventry made a small profit on the deal, but the Croatia legend never actually made a Premier League appearance.
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At the time, there were suggestions that Betis would not sell Jarni to Madrid and the transfer was engineered to sneak him away to the Bernabeu.
Then Coventry manager Gordon Strachan had paid £2.6million for the defender with Real Madrid paying £3.4m just days later.
"Strachan wanted me to sign for Coventry," Jarni said on the rumours about the intentions behind the transfer.
"He liked the way I played, he liked my performances in the Spanish league and with the national team
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"But after [he signed me at Coventry] we received an offer from Real Madrid and I decided to sign for them instead.
"I wouldn't say it was my wife's decision, but it was a family decision.
"My family was against moving to England. We had small children and my daughter was in elementary school in Spain so we preferred to stay there rather than move to England."
If the whole saga was indeed a ploy to engineer a move to Real Madrid, it did not really work out for Jarni.
He failed to cement a starting place in the Madrid side, having a pretty handy left-back in Roberto Carlos already.
After just one season at the Bernabeu, he dropped down to the Segunda Division with Las Palmas, before a spell with Panathinaikos.
Jarni played in three World Cups across his career, the first in 1990 with Yugoslavia and then in 1998 and 2002 with Croatia.
But in England will forever be associated with his brief spell at Highfield Road before flitting off to join Raul, Clarence Seedorf, and compatriot Davor Suker in Madrid.
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