‘I always liked this when I was young,’ he explains. ‘Then after, when I was getting older, I met a friend and he is a magician and he taught me some tricks. I love to do this sort of thing for entertainment and just to pass time. Then I had the opportunity to meet this magician in England – and Ben is amazing, he can do amazing things, and then I had this opportunity to enjoy some magic with him.’

There are not only cards tricks in the David Luiz repertoire. He has a wider set of conjuring skills given enough time to work on them, although he admits he has not yet got so far as sawing anyone in half!

‘I normally do them at home,’ he says, ‘with friends and sometimes when we are bored at the house or we are waiting for the food, and I like to learn about these kind of things. All the things I can do in life that make someone smile, I try to learn and also with the magic now, I can use it to make someone smile.’

So how about using some magic in his feet to send one of his free-kicks into the Leicester net? He came very close in the 3-0 home win over the Foxes in October when he fired a great effort onto the angle of post and crossbar.

‘I hope so,’ he smiles. ‘I am not training so much at the moment because I am not in the best moment with my knees, and I know these kind of things in football, the free-kicks, the corners, it is the repetition that makes you better. When you can train more and more and more, you get the fine detail – how you touch the ball, the power, how you stop the feet. At the moment I cannot train too much but in the future I hope I can help Chelsea with some free-kicks.’

The knee problem he is taking care to overcome is the result of the Sergio Aguero red-card foul at Manchester City, when despite the initial impact occurring on one leg, the weight of our player’s body as he fell caused the problem in the other, leading to the strapping seen in games since. But David Luiz is recovering and describes himself as very eager to get out on the pitch today, being one of the players yet to play since the Spurs defeat

He faced Leicester with Paris St-Germain in pre-season in July and won 4-0 and was part of the Chelsea side that left the King Power Stadium with a 4-2 win in the League Cup two months later, as well as gaining the three points from the Premier League game at the Bridge. Though David Luiz was not here when the results were different last season, the Leicester story was one followed by people over in France, not least because of the influence on that success of Parisian N’Golo Kante.