Featured Image Credit: Sky Sports, Alamy, Stephen Hendry's Cue Tips/YouTube
Topics: Chelsea, John Terry, Jose Mourinho, Premier League, Football
Patrick Rowe
Topics: Chelsea, John Terry, Jose Mourinho, Premier League, Football
Chelsea legend John Terry has revealed the unique tactic Jose Mourinho used at Stamford Bridge to gain the mental edge over their opponents.
Terry, 42, joined Chelsea at the age of 14 and went on to make over 700 appearances in blue, winning 14 trophies in the process as well as becoming the all time leading scoring defender with 41 goals.
During his time at the club he was managed by Jose Mourinho on two separate occasions, from 2004 to 2007 and 2013 to 2015. A special relationship would go on to develop between the two, with Terry claiming the Portuguese tactician was 'the best' manager he had worked with 'by a mile'.
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Speaking on Stephen Hendry's Cue Tips, Terry said: "Oh he was the best by a mile, just from everything - from man management, from the training perspective... from day one he was unbelievable.
"He made you feel like I was the best defender in the world. Whether he thought it or not, he went and told the press that, he told me that, he'd message me at night that; he'd push me every day in training."
Terry then went on to talk about the unique tactics deployed by Mourinho in order to give him the mental edge over his opponents.
"When Mourinho came in he brought a completely different mentality to the training ground," added the former England international.
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"For home games, we used to walk in with our clothes for the night out after. So you know when you see players getting off the bus - we'd get the off bus with our gear to go on a night out. And he'd be like: 'don't mind as long as you win'."
It is not the first time Terry has spoken about Mourinho's intense desire to win at all costs.
He previously revealed that the Portuguese exploited a rule he was unaware of to gain an advantage over Chelsea's opponents.
"Just to win. Didn’t care about anything else, he did anything to get an edge," Terry said on beIN Sports last year, when asked what Mourinho wanted from his players.
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"I remember, the rule was, if we were 1-0 up and the ball got delivered into the box…if two defenders went up together and both went down on the floor after, you didn’t have to go off the field of play.
"So last 10 or 15 minutes, he would sit me and Gary Cahill down and go: 'when the ball comes in the box, make sure you both go down - bump into each other and both go down because you can't both go off.'
"We'd never heard of that rule ever. So ball comes over in the last 10 minutes, head it away, Gaz goes down and I think 'I better go down'. So I dropped to the floor and the ref said 'you two off the pitch'. I said 'no that's not the rule, ask the linesman.'
"Mourinho was so far ahead with those little bits and you're talking small margins and the best managers find those little margins. Incredible."