FeaturePyjamas, determination and a right-back: Inside Fabinho's Real Madrid spell

The Champions League final in Paris on Saturday will see Fabinho pitted against his former club.

His oft-forgotten season-long loan in 2012-13 included just one appearance for Los Blancos' first team.

However, it was enough to put the Brazilian on his eventual path towards becoming the crucial anchor in Jürgen Klopp's trophy-hungry side.

It was a whirlwind few weeks for an 18-year-old Fabinho. He had just moved from Fluminense to Portuguese side Rio Ave. Less than a month later, he was sent off to Real, with their reserve team in need of a right-back.

First impressions are vital, so they say.

Fabinho would first meet then-first-team boss Jose Mourinho at a Madrid hotel drowsy and ill-prepared.

"I woke up to somebody knocking on the door," he recently told the tale to FourFourTwo. "I looked through the peephole and I couldn't believe it. It was [Jorge] Mendes and Jose Mourinho!

"I was still wearing my pyjamas, not at all prepared to meet him – I didn't even know what to say."

Joining up with the Castilla squad, who competed in the second division at the time, he became known for the old-looking boots he first turned up in.

"These Copa Mundials!" Castilla teammate Tomas Mejias laughs, nearly a decade on.

That Castilla squad contained three players who the Reds will come up against at Stade de France this weekend.

Nacho, Lucas Vazquez and Casemiro progressed and remained in the senior set-up, with Alvaro Morata and Jese Rodriguez also part of the 2012-13 class.

Fabinho, still skinny in frame, would occupy the right-sided full-back role, making 30 outings in total. Those displays caught the eye of Mourinho and his coaching staff.

"He was a powerful player, willing to run up and down the pitch to chase the ball," Jose Morais, Mourinho's assistant coach, tells Liverpoolfc.com. "Physically strong in duels, including heading.

"Technically good, with progressive dribbling and quality to associate his game with the team game. Good passing and crossing, and highly committed to team tasks."

He was rewarded with a senior debut for Real, which consisted of a 14-minute runout at the Santiago Bernabeu against Malaga CF in the league.

Playing with Xabi Alonso, Fabinho would go on to provide an assist for Angel Di Maria's goal that rounded off a 6-2 win.

"You could see that technically he was very good, physically he was very good," Alonso remembers. "But he was playing right-back."

Hindsight now questions why Real, or his other previous clubs for that matter, didn't view Fabinho as the all-encompassing defensive midfielder he is these days.

Real, in their case, had earmarked his future Brazil teammate Casemiro to inherit the No.6 role and felt no need to change.

"He was willing to take the opportunity more than anything, independent of the position," Morais says.

That eventual positional switch would take place at AS Monaco, where he headed to after his stint in Spain. He would develop to become, in the words of Klopp, 'the best in the world in that position'.

That trajectory has somewhat surprised even those closest to Fabinho.

Mejias was a guest of his for the 2019 Champions League final in Madrid, after their strong bond started when he helped Fabinho find a house in that very city.

"To be honest, no-one expected this career, but from the beginning you could see the quality in this player," Mejias says. "In the moment someone gave him the chance, his quality was out straight away.

"When one of your friends wins the Champions League, it's a real experience for you and for him. I'm happy for him."

Morais adds: "The character he showed and the attitude and willingness to learn paid off."

Fabinho will intrinsically be linked to Liverpool's last European Cup final with Real Madrid, even though he played no part.

The blow of that 3-1 defeat in Kyiv in 2018 was softened when his transfer to Anfield was announced, out of the blue, in the days following.

Mejias was one of very few to be in the loop about the deal.

He relives: "When he was in Monaco, I met him there and I was visiting him and stayed in his apartment.

"We were talking about how he was close to signing for another team in England.

"And in the end, Liverpool came and it was a really good move from him. From this day on, he's flying."