Picture the scene: Monaco have been crowned French champions for the first time in 17 years and Benjamin Mendy, Kylian Mbappe, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Bernardo Silva and the club’s other coveted rising stars are sat around a table together, eating, reflecting on a remarkable season and playing a game probably best described as “Where are you going?”.

“We started to have this game where we’d be asking each other, ‘So where are you going then?’” Mendy explains, grinning at the recollection. “And everyone would lie. Some would say, ‘Oh, I’m going to Chelsea me’, others would go, ‘No, no, I’m off to Paris St-Germain’. Everyone was making up these stories. But when the calls came in and we all did go off to sign for other clubs, we’d agreed beforehand that we’d send each other Whatsapp pictures of ourselves at the point of signing, with the shirt aloft.

“Bernardo ended up being the first one. The rest of us were on holiday when we suddenly got this round robin photo from him signing for Manchester City, which was a surprise because he was the only one who had never said where he was going or what his plans were! And then he knocked us all over with that picture – ‘I’ve done it, here I am’. After that it was like dominos falling.”