How snakey Thibaut Courtois got back at Chelsea with mind game

Thibaut Courtois has famously been branded as a “snake” by Chelsea fans after his slippery exit from the club, but reporting in Football.London today reveals he’s even more cunning than we had thought.

They say that before Chelsea’s game with Real Madrid, the former Blue told Karim Benzema to switch ends after the coin toss.

Chelsea prefer to play towards the Shed End in the second half, and as a former player Courtois knew that. He told Benzema to “turn Chelsea around”, to psyche out his old team.

In the end, it was more Karim Benzema’s brilliance that did for Chelsea, but those psychological tricks can have a surprisingly significant effect on players when you’re talking about a game at the very highest level, with the slimmest of margins.

Let’s hope we can use former Madrid player Mateo Kovacic to come up with some similar tricks for the return game.

Chelsea News