Chelsea legend John Terry ‘hung up the phone’ when Kalidou Koulibaly first called to ask for No.26 shirt

Chelsea new boy Kalidou Koulibaly has revealed that John Terry thought he was being prank-called when the Senegalese defender first called to ask for his iconic number 26 shirt.

The former Napoli man uploaded a clip to social media this week of a phone call he had with Terry in which he asked the club’s decorated former skipper if he could inherit his old jersey number – which has not been worn since.

While Terry was more than happy for Koulibaly to take on the No.26 mantle, the centre-back’s first attempt to call up the Blues icon did not exactly go to plan after Terry hung up on him.

Asked if it was a nervous phone call to make and how it came about, Koulibaly replied at his unveiling: ‘Yes it is true. I was nervous a bit because I was waiting to sign my contract with Chelsea and it happened the day before, in the night, so I was happy.

‘And the second thing I wanted was to know which numbers were free, and speaking with the team manager he told me some numbers and he didn’t tell me the 26.

‘So I asked him for the 26, but I’d done my research before and I’d seen that John left it in 2017 and nobody took it from that time, so I was a bit asking myself, is it retired? Or maybe nobody wanted to take it.

‘So I asked Gianfranco Zola, who was a player for Chelsea also who I know very well because we have the same person working for our business in Italy.

‘I talked to him, he told me the story of Chelsea, I have to know everything when I come somewhere, so I asked tough questions to him about the club, about the structure, about the supporters.

‘And I asked him for the phone number of John because I wanted to ask for the jersey and he gave me directly the number. And I called him – but at the beginning he did not believe that it was