Ex-FC Barcelona Star: 'I Would Have Liked To Play For Real Madrid'

Ex-FC Barcelona star Arturo Vidal confessed that he would have liked to have played for its bitter ... [+] rivals Real Madrid during an interview with TNT Sports.

Ex-FC Barcelona star Arturo Vidal confessed that he would have liked to have played for its bitter rivals Real Madrid during an interview with TNT Sports.

The veteran is currently back at his boyhood club Colo-Colo where his professional began almost 20 years ago in 2005.

Shortly after, a young Vidal crossed the Atlantic and began a highly-successful European career which took in nine top flight league titles with four different clubs.

One of those was FC Barcelona, where the midfield warhorse clinched La Liga in 2019 before departing for Inter Milan the following year in the aftermath of an 8-2 pummelling by one of his ex-employers in eventual Champions League kings that term Bayern Munich.

Culers warmed to Vidal during his short time at Camp Nou, and he said in 2020 when Inter were set to play against Los Blancos in the UCL that he hoped "to celebrate a win with Inter and Barcelona fans" after "two great years" in Catalonia.

Before that, in 2017, he ranted that a "robbery like this cannot happen in the Champions League" when feeling that his Bayern team had been hard done to in the Bernabeu during a last eight clash.

That's why Vidal's response to one of the questions in a quick-fire interview with TNT Sports might surprise some of a Blaugrana persuasion.

The 36-year-old was asked which club he would have liked to have played for, and he answered: "It could have been Real Madrid".

This is true in that the two-time Copa America champion with Chile came close to signing for the team from the Spanish capital in 2015.

But still, that might not have been the wisest thing to blurt out if he plans on staying on the right side of Barca supporters moving forward.

Vidal could have won back some credit by saying that the most difficult team he played against was Luis Enrique's treble-winning Barcelona in 2015.

"They beat us in the Champions League final," he said, reminding us of a 3-1 win over Juventus in Berlin.

For Vidal, there was also no doubt that Lionel Messi is "the most talented player" he has ever played with.