Roman Abramovich was always known to be a ruthless owner with managers of the club but back in the day, he also used to be just as harsh to the players, John Obi Mikel revealed.
Mikel told radio station Dubai eye that Roman Abramovich would come into the training ground during bad form with his translator before revealing that “he would start screaming at us in Russian”.
Once Abramovich had finished his rant, he would walk off and tell the players to go and start winning games again.
This philosophy you can imagine helped breed the consistent success over the years under the Russian’s ownership, the hard hitting facts of poor form could never have any excuses, Chelsea’s former owner believed you must win at all costs, no matter the cost.
In total, Chelsea won 19 trophies under Roman’s tenure and Boehly/Clearlake will be hoping to emulate that success in the future.
"Once Roman Abramovich flies into the training ground with his helicopter, we know the manager is gone"
– John Mikel Obi pic.twitter.com/9tg0uKX321
— 🐬 @𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗷𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗯𝗼𝘆 (@OneJoblessBoy) February 16, 2023
Gran tío Abuvich te recordaremos siempre, gracias por tanto
If you think that a blowhard owner or manager screaming at players is the reason a team wins you’ve probably not played a lot of sports!
I guarantee you Abramovich’s rants had next to nothing to do with Chelsea’s success over the years. I had a coach who once broke his hand punching a locker at half-time and I can assure you it did not make us any better in the second half! While there is certainly a place for passion, it means nothing if you can’t build relationships with each player and figure out how to communicate effectively with each one. Great managers understand every player is different—one reacts well to being called out, another needs a quiet word. Just look at how Jose Mourinho’s pattern (as a blowhard who regularly throws his players “under the bus” publicly) has backfired to the point that, despite all his early-career successes, his managerial stints rarely survived more than a few years (because he burned bridges faster than he could build them) and now no top club will have him anymore. He’s a case study in how/why the “hairdryer” style of blasting your players (as the Abramovich anecdote describes) only works once or twice before it becomes totally destructive. And it’s why Mourinho “lost the dressing room” at Chelsea, Man Utd, and Tottenham.
I will advice that john mikel obi learns to seal his lips about certain things, he should stop having us think that somehow he is a bitter and loose mouthed person. Pretend to be a big boy even if you are not. I use to think highly of him but there is nothing as un attractive as a man that talks too much whether true or false.