John Terry was on Simon Jordan’s podcast this week, and some interesting stories have come out of it.
One anecdote Terry related was to do with the arrival of Andre Villas-Boas, then a very young coach trying to stamp his authority on the squad. It didn’t go well.
There was a whole incident involving young players in first class and first team starts in economy. It’s not clear if this was a planned inversion by the new coach or just an accident, but as you can imagine it didn’t go down well.
“He tried to make a statement day one and failed instantly,” Terry insisted. This was only the start of his conflict with the Portuguese coach.
Of course we all know what happened next – AVB lasted half a season and was sacked, Roberto Di Matteo came in and let the players manage themselves, and that same year we won the Champions League.
You can see Terry tell the story in the clip embedded here:
If people think players in Football Manager are unreasonable.
This is John Terry talking about how AVB lost the dressing room at Chelsea… because they refused to go in economy. pic.twitter.com/a9O8hu6bnJ
— Out of Context Football Manager (@nocontextfm1) April 25, 2024