Renowned manager Jose Mourinho has clarified his decision to transform John Obi Mikel into a defensive midfielder during their time together at Chelsea.
Mourinho, a respected Portuguese football strategist, had a strong inclination towards defensive midfielders at Stamford Bridge, acquiring players such as Michael Essien, Mikel, Tiago Mendes, Lassana Diarra, and Nemanja Matic.
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Despite Mikel’s creative role with the Nigeria national teams, his transition to Chelsea prompted a shift to the defensive midfield role, serving as an understudy to Claude Makélélé.
While commencing his career as a number 10, Mikel evolved into an accomplished defensive midfielder, gaining acclaim for his exceptional positional awareness, physical prowess, and passing abilities.
The retired Nigerian international contends that he excelled more as an attacking midfielder than in his defensive role.
When asked to explain the qualities that he saw in Mikel that needed a change in his position, Mourinho said on The Obi One Podcast: “In the national team he can be what he wants. I liked everything and if you go through my positional midfield players that I had in my career, there are lots of similar things.
“A part of Makélélé that was small, I had them all tall and physically strong with a good occupation of the space but then with what I call the simplicity of football, which is fundamental in that position and people sometime confuse the creative player with the simple one.
“In some areas the creative is fine, in some other areas the simplicity is the genius. The team needs balance and they have to give balance when the team has and doesn’t have the ball.
“They need to have that discipline to be humble in the sense the team is more important than myself, what I give the team is more important than what the team gives to me and maybe that’s why in Nigeria he wants to go and play that number 10, to be the top guy.
“With me at Chelsea he was a fantastic positional midfield player – very quick thinking, one touch, two touches.
“Everything make it simple, the game flowing, he was not a guy to win a race of 100m but everything was fast with him with the ball and understanding the position in the game.”
Initially introduced as a Manchester United player, Mikel’s transfer to the club didn’t materialize, leading him to eventually join Stamford Bridge at a substantial cost of £16 million for Chelsea.
Mourinho hinted that former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was eager to secure Mikel due to his exceptional skills on the field.
“I saw that the first time I saw him. The first time I saw him was quite fun because he was hidden, training at Chelsea, and one day I was asking for a young player to come because I needed a young player to make me work well.
“They spoke to me about some Nigerian guy that was in Norway. The first question I asked was, ‘he’s 17, is he strong enough physically?
“They told me he’s, so let him come. I was expecting some normal player, I saw immediately he was not normal.
“Of course, Sir Alex knew that he was not normal and then there was a fight that was not normal, but then everything ended in the best way for Chelsea, in the best way for him because in the end he stayed at Chelsea more than 10 years.
“He won everything, he won his money and he could play Nigeria number 10.”
