Kalidou Koulibaly revealed a disbelieving John Terry initially hung up on him when he called the Chelsea legend for permission to inherit his old shirt number.
The No 26 has significance to £34million summer signing Koulibaly as well as Terry, with it being his old Napoli number but also the Senegal captain and his wife Charline Oudenot being born on the same day - June 20 - in the same hospital in France.
The video of a nervous Koulibaly asking Terry if he could take on the shirt that had been unoccupied since the latter's departure in 2017 surfaced on social media this week and he said: 'In the beginning, he didn't believe it was me.