The legendary Ukrainian forward Andriy Shevchenko recalled the period of his career at London’s Chelsea and his work under the head coach of that team Jose Mourinho.
Andriy Shevchenko during his time at Chelsea“That Chelsea had a strong desire to win. Players like Frank Lampard, Petr Cech, John Terry, and Arjen Robben were at the peak of their careers. This was combined with experienced players in the squad, such as Claude Makélélé, Michael Ballack, and myself.
We were a strong team. We started the 2006/07 season a bit inconsistently, but I liked that there was very high competition in the locker room, a good atmosphere, and we motivated each other for success.
Working with Jose Mourinho was a wonderful experience — I have great respect for him because he always made the best decisions for the team.
He was a master of motivating each player in different ways and knew how to strike the right chord in each of our souls — he used his intellect to convince us both individually and collectively as a team.
We were his soldiers. I was lucky that every coach I worked with throughout my career had one and the same trait: a winning mentality.
For me, the most special moment at Chelsea was winning the FA Cup final in 2007 against Manchester United (1:0, — ed. note) at the new Wembley Stadium, because of how much that stadium means to the English. In both of my seasons at Chelsea (2006/07, 2007/08, — ed. note) we were close to winning the EPL, but Manchester United won both times by a small margin (6 points in the 2006/07 season and 2 points in the 2007/08 season, — ed. note),” — Shevchenko’s words are quoted by FourFourTwo.
