Chelsea stalwart John Obi Mikel has lifted the lid on his time at the club, revealing that fights often broke out during training at Cobham. During his 11 years with the Blues, Mikel witnessed several fiery clashes among team-mates, but insists that it was a sign of the club’s thirst for victory.
In a period that saw Chelsea amass an enviable array of talent thanks to Roman Abramoivch splashing money in the transfer market, the competitiveness fostered a group of players who would go down as club legends.
Mikel reminisced about how the team’s insatiable hunger for silverware was matched by equally intense training ground bust-ups.
Speaking on The High Performance podcast, Mikel recalled: “Our training was intense. There was two or three players in every position. You know straight away that if you don’t play well you’re out of the first XI. So the competition was always there.”
“In training, the tackles would be flying in, [some] players think ‘if I get you injured then I’m going to be the one who’s playing’. I don’t think that’s what it was but the tackles were flying in, there were fights happening during training.”
“There were real, proper fights during training,” the ex-midfielder admitted. “I remember Michael Ballack had a fight with Salomon Kalou. Salomon Kalou was a very quiet guy, lovely boy, but Michael Ballack must have done something [to him] that day. He went off.
“We don’t know what happened but Michael Ballack must have done something that’s got Salomon Kalou to go off. Proper fight. They had to be separated, had to be pulled away.
“When you look at Michael, he’s a massive unit. For Kalou to go and square up to him and say ‘let’s have it’, he must have done something really to get him going.”
Miklel is still unaware what caused the row as Kalou remained too angry to talk about the incident before heading home. However, the former holding midfielder explained that the coaching staff welcomed players confronting each other as long as it didn’t affect their cohesiveness on matchdays.
Mikel didn’t shy away from his own scuffles either, recounting a language mix-up during a rondo drill that led to a clash with Florent Malouda. “When you give a bad pass, sometimes you’re trying to set someone up to get smashed,” Mikel said.
“Florent Malouda spoke French, I think to Didier Drogba, and said ‘give him a short pass because I want to smash him’. So Didier laid a short pass and I went for it and got absolutely hammered. I jumped up and we both went at it. Carlo Ancelotti was standing there and he rushed in and we got separated.”
The Blues icon saw no harm in his teammates looking to settle their differences at Cobham. However, Andriy Shevchenko’s knockout punch on Tal Ben Haim seemingly topped the list of training ground dramas.
“There were so many fights,” Mikel continued. “I remember one with Tal Ben Haim and Andriy Shevchenko, but I think Tal Ben Haim got knocked out properly. Again, [Shevchenko was] somebody who never spoke. You would never hear Shevchenko say a word, but it just shows the competitiveness.
When asked if that was a step too far, Mikel conceded Shevchenko may have crossed a line but justified that it was all down to the squad’s natural drive. “It’s a bit much, but that’s what spurred us on,” he admitted.
“That’s what got us going. We had bad times during the season, you come in and everybody’s grumpy. The manager’s trying to find a way to get back to winning ways, chopping and changing, and you are not playing and don’t know why. Everyone’s in a bad mood, things are not going well for us.
“Then you come to training and someone’s trying to bully you? No, you have to stand up for yourself. That’s what happened time and time again.”
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