Chelsea legend Gary Cahill has a wealth of memories from his time with the Blues, having played nearly 300 matches for the club. Among those memories are moments of frustration with Jose Mourinho and confusion under Maurizio Sarri.
During his time at Chelsea, the 38-year-old Cahill secured two Premier League titles, the Champions League, two FA Cups, and two Europa Leagues, making 290 appearances.
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He worked with several managers, including Antonio Conte, Andre Villas-Boas, and Roberto Di Matteo. However, Mourinho left a lasting impression, notably for his mind games.
Cahill’s center-back partner, John Terry, once recounted an incident where Mourinho told them to “f**k off,” threatening to replace them with Raphael Varane and another defender.
Asked for his memories of the event, Cahill told The Obi One podcast: ‘I was taken aback. I was shocked by it, to be fair it p***ed me off massively.
‘But you know what, that was him though wasn’t it? The mind games, he was clever with stuff like that.
‘He knew he’d get a reaction, especially off the character of me and John, he knew that he would get a reaction and he did. I was fuming.’
Terry had given his side of the story on the same podcast, saying: ‘We did this possession game where me and Gaz played the ball into midfield. There’s no space to play it into midfield but you have to go through midfield to get into the other third.
‘Me and Gaz are feeding it, it’s getting intercepted, we’re conceding goals and he’s stopped the session. I’m captain, Gaz is vice-captain and he says, “See you two, you can f*** off.”
‘I’ll go and sign Varane and I’ll sign another top defender in the world and spend £100m and you two can sit on the bench and watch them. Me and Gaz were like, “f***ing hell we won the league last year!”
‘We couldn’t believe it. Me and Gaz looked at each other and said, “Right, game on”.’
