BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – During Real Madrid’s traditional team dinner before the winter break in Spain, France left back Ferland Mendy discovered he had an insightful “Secret Santa.”
Mendy’s anonymous Christmas present turned out to be a brick.
The brick was meant as a joke, but one with a point. It was that Mendy plays with an intense determination to stop attackers from advancing down his side of the pitch.
“That gift of the brick was because during practice he sometimes gives us some very hard knocks,” fellow defender Raphael Varane said on Saturday, after Mendy was one of Madrid’s top performers in a 1-0 win over Atlético Madrid.