Have you ever heard of a player who made his debut for the club of his youth at the age of 34? Or a star who cancelled his contract with a team in mid-season only to move to their bitter city rivals on a free transfer? What about an international captain who, to save his international career, signed for a club team managed by the national coach in order?
All of these scenarios may sound unusual -- to put it mildly -- but they all happened to the same person. Roman Shirokov is the man in the spotlight and, on Sunday, all eyes will be on him when the Russian Premier League resumes after the lengthy winter break with the Moscow derby.
At 34, the midfielder will make his league debut for CSKA against Spartak -- the club who terminated his contract by mutual agreement in January. The game is always a dramatic and emotional affair, but it has never been as spicy as this time round.
Shirokov's career to date would make an entertaining book. He started his career at the CSKA academy but was not considered a good prospect because of his outrageously poor attitude.
As he himself has admitted, Roman preferred drinking bouts with his buddies rather than developing his football skills, and never made it to the first-team squad. While on loan to lowly Torpedo-ZIL, he got drunk and went missing after just one game, and then faked a broken leg in order to explain his absence.
CSKA president Yevgeny Giner didn't have patience for such bizarre exploits and the player was cut from the team. He admitted later on: "I stole four years of life from myself."
Eventually, he managed to get his career back on track at the age of 26. He joined Dick Advocaat's Zenit St. Petersburg in 2008 and developed into the finest midfielder in Russia when Luciano Spalletti took over in 2009.
He won two championship titles, and became so important to the Russia national team that his injury ahead of the 2014 World Cup was considered disastrous, and was largely blamed for the team's fiasco in Brazil as they failed to get out of a group containing Belgium, Algeria and South Korea.
By that summer, though, Shirokov's time at Zenit came to an end. Tension with Spalletti, which the coach later denied, forced the club to loan him out to Krasnodar at the beginning of 2014, and he became a free agent in the summer. With plenty of options open to him, he chose to sign for Zenit's fierce rivals Spartak.
"My late father was a huge Spartak fan, and so are 99 percent of my friends," he explained, and it seemed a logical move to many, because Shirokov's vision and silky skills suited what the club has historically stood for.
The problem was that Murat Yakin, Spartak's Swiss coach during the 2014-15 season, didn't share such a philosophy and the duo were on a collision course before Shirokov even kicked a ball. The player harshly criticised Yakin's tactics and was loaned out to Krasnodar at the beginning of 2015, where he then attacked club owner Leonid Fedun in a TV interview.
Incredibly, Shirokov was allowed back after his loan and, with Spartak legend Dmitry Alenichev replacing Yakin in the summer, the new coach claimed that the midfielder was key to his plans. Yet despite impressing for his country in the Euro 2016 qualifiers, Shirokov's lacklustre displays did not win over the Spartak fans.
Then a rather unusual clause in his contract was publically revealed. It turned out that Spartak had signed the veteran for two seasons in 2014, but his deal included an automatic option to prolong it for the third year if Shirokov made more at least 15 appearances in 2015-16. When the midfielder reached 14 games in November, Fedun instructed Alenichev not to use him anymore, so that the option would not be activated.
The club wanted to nullify the clause, but Shirokov refused and it looked like he would be left on the sidelines for the remainder of the season -- a disastrous prospect for the national team ahead of the European Championships.
After Leonid Slutsky, who replaced Fabio Capello as Russia manager in August while keeping his job at CSKA, made it crystal clear that everyone had to play regularly for their clubs in order to get in his squad, there was a genuine possibility that the captain could miss out on Euro 2016. But Shirokov and Spartak agreed to terminate his contract in January and, a couple of weeks later, he signed for CSKA.
Similar to the tension between Liverpool and Manchester United, no player has moved directly from Spartak to CSKA since little known goalkeeper Dmitry Tyapushkin did so in 1996. To find a top star who chose to leave Spartak for their rivals we have to go back to Vagiz Khidiyatullin in 1981 and the rivalry was much less important back then because Spartak's biggest enemy was Dynamo Kiev in the days before the Soviet Union fell apart.
Making headlines won't phase Shirokov, but there are strong reasons for his move. Aside from aspiring to win the title with a team that are leading the table at the winter break, and the impact that playing under Slutsky will have on his hopes of playing at Euro 2016, his biggest desire was to return to the club where it all began. He wasted his initial spell at CSKA and now gets a golden chance to make amends for that lost opportunity and put the record straight.
Money was no object. Shirokov signed until the end of the season, and will receive just €300,000 as opposed to annual salary of €2.7 million at Spartak. "Roman came to me and said: 'Give me whatever you can. I want to return home' -- and that was it," Giner explained. "We discussed life and not money."
And so, the 34-year-old made his CSKA debut against Ufa in the Russian Cup quarterfinals on Tuesday, 13 years after leaving the club as a troubled youngster. After a poor first half, Shirokov inevitably scored the opener with a brilliant shot into the top corner, and then was at the heart of a wonderful team move finished by Ahmed Musa as CSKA won 2-0.
Next up at the weekend is a clash with Spartak. It is a bit unfortunate that the newly-built CSKA stadium is not ready to host the derby yet, and it will take place at the small and distant Khimki Arena, but that doesn't really matter.
The story of his rise to prominence has been phenomenal, and the stage is set for one of the most emotional and incredible games of Shirokov's life. Now all he has to do is deliver.