In lieu of actual people turning up, Los Blancos put up a makeshift 1950s crowd montage

After drawing in 50,000 madridistas for Kaka’s unveiling and a whopping 80,000 for Cristiano Ronaldo’s Bernabeu debut, the pressure was on Karim Benzema to put Spanish bums on seats at his initiation ceremony last night.

A fairly impressive 20,000 fans showed up - a reasonable figure in proportion to his transfer fee and status - but conniving Madrid officials tried to trick us into thinking the Bernabeu was packed out with this fake crowd backdrop. You may have fooled those with a black and white TV licence Florentino, but not The Spoiler. We went colour years ago.

When he was given the microphone, the young Frenchman revealed his excitement at playing at the club of his idols Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo (presumably fat Ronaldo), and like the Portuguese man-o’-sex, signed off with a rousing “Hala Madrid!”