Online Reporter
CHELSEA once obtained footage of Bolton training to help their Premier League title challenge.
Long before Southampton were caught out spying on Middlesbrough ahead of last season’s Championship play-offs, Jose Mourinho’s Blues were up to tricks of their own.
An interesting revelation from the new Netflix documentary is Mourinho’s use of video analysis.
Andre Villas-Boas, who would later go on to manage Chelsea and Tottenham, was in charge of that area.
AVB said: “That was the breakthrough in terms of match analysis. Not a lot of people were doing it to the extent that we were doing it at the time.
“It was the old times of the DVD players and sometimes the DVD player didn’t work, and Jose used to destroy the projector or the DVD player!”
One of the video sessions involved footage from Sam Allardyce’s Bolton training session Aahead of Chelsea playing them.
Captain John Terry explained: “Big Sam is saying: ‘Hit Gallas, he’s not very good in the air’. He’s spitting and stuff like that on the mic.
“And it was just like – wow, who gets footage from someone’s training ground? I am actually still not sure where he got the footage from!”
Terry says he would have been prepared to be carried out in a “coffin” for former boss Mourinho.
The pair spent five-and-a-half seasons together across two spells in a trophy-ladden period for Chelsea, winning three Premier League titles, three League Cups and one FA Cup.
Terry recounts being ignored in the treatment room by the Portuguese because he was injured.
The defender’s response was to take an injection for the pain so that he could join training. The physio argued he was “mad”.
But Terry said: “For him, I would give everything. I would leave that pitch in a coffin for him.”
There was – Terry insists – a “soft side” to Mourinho and every Sunday players were told to bring their kids to the training ground.
The Special One would crack jokes with them and showcase a part of his personality many did not see.
Even with an influx of big names, the core of Mourinho’s Chelsea during his first spell were England duo Terry and Frank Lampard.
They were his lieutenants in the dressing room and former skipper Terry vividly recalls the mood among the squad.
Mourinho described the players like “an army going into battle”.
Terry said: “There was a picture of the Premier League up in the dressing room.
“And there was a very clear mindset of: this is what we are going to win.
“From those first team meetings, to the very first game against Man United, the words and the terminology he would use in those meetings…like: ‘We are going to f*** them. We are going to win the league. We are going to take the trophy off them this year’.” – Sun
