‘The squad has changed … rotation is going to be a fact of life’
Back in London and immediately there was the media to face. The first of August was the day of our presentation press conference. Everyone sun-tanned and looking relaxed, this was always an enjoyable time, although this year there was so much to talk about. The presentations alone took up an enormous amount of time, almost two hours, and, as I expected, the attendance was massive. There was no Macho unfortunately, due to his injury, but all the other new signings were present: Geremi, Johnson, Bridge, Duff and Ambrosio. This was a day, I would say, when we had definite confirmation that our squad would be the cover story of the season. No pressure as far as I was concerned, simply an exciting situation.
To be honest, the nice part was that the presentation was a foretaste of more to come, though at the time there was no certainty about the next move. Well actually, I did have an idea or two …
In fact, there would be another red-letter day just four days later. Two new purchases. And not just any two players, but Seba Veron from Manchester United and Joe Cole from West Ham. And in one shot! Brilliant. Really and truly, a manager could hardly ask more of a club. For most of my counterparts in the league, even one from a possible two would be a dream, let alone getting both. On the other hand, a club with big ambitions needs high-quality players, and these two were at the very top of my list. The great thing was that Chelsea had managed to keep me happy, bearing in mind the value of the players and their importance to our plans. First it had been Bridge and Duff, and now another brace of top players had arrived at Stamford Bridge on the very same day.
Joe Cole is an investment for the future, but he will be useful in the present too. He really is a natural talent like few others, and has a Latin streak, with his unpredictability and imagination. But this is not all. In my opinion he has incredible potential for improvement. He needs to develop a little self-control, precisely because he is so eager, always wanting to dribble, using up too much energy in the middle of the park. He can and must learn to do all this in the final third of the pitch, where such skill can be deadly. For the good of the team and especially for his own, I hope to be able to contribute to his improvement as he gains experience by playing. He could be an important factor in my plans to open up opposition defences on days – and who can say why, but even now I sensed there could be quite a few – when we happen to find them packed tight.
As for Veron, obviously there is nothing I want to teach him. He is already one of the world’s best midfielders, in my opinion. He failed to hit top form at Manchester United for a number of reasons, but with us I feel sure it will be a very different story. I will certainly be looking to exploit his desire for the chance to shine again. The desire all great players have. And then again, I am used to working with Argentinian players, having coached Gabriel Batistuta at Fiorentina and Claudio Lopez at Valencia, to name just two.
If encouraged and given free rein to show his class, Seba can change the face of our team. The thing I liked immediately, in addition to everything I already knew about him, was his personal approach. When we spoke for the first time after his contract had been signed, he showed a tactical flexibility and an appetite for work that will help us make great strides, I feel sure.
Having got over our jet lag, training was again fully underway and we were ready to resume our schedule of pre-season friendlies, fortunately all in and around the London area this time, so we would avoid the burden of travelling. I cannot really speak for my English colleagues, but where pre-season games are concerned, I certainly hold with the Italian school of thought. Friendlies are simply the best way of measuring workloads. Our usual practice is to work especially hard on the pre-season training camp, and the first few matches then serve to put the players under a little extra competitive stress. That is the usefulness of these games, rather than the results themselves.
The first was against Crystal Palace, at Selhurst Park, where we quickly went 1 – 0 up through Mikael Forssell, who really does continue to fulfil his promise. He has a remarkable strike rate, obviously a factor to keep strongly in consideration, along with the unqualified admiration I have for him. He has a goal-scoring instinct typical of the great strikers, and I know he has a great future in store. Mika is a fighter on the pitch, but he has the right attitude in training too. It has happened more than once that I have had to get him out of the gym or off the pitch, for fear of him overdoing his training. He always has the right outlook, and this I like. Clearly, he will need time to make a full recovery after the serious knee injury that has sidelined him for almost a year, and for his own good this means plenty of games – something we cannot guarantee here at Stamford Bridge, particularly given the number of star forwards in the squad. In the interests of everyone concerned, we need to find him somewhere to play. He has admirers in several leagues – in Serie A, in La Liga in Spain and above all in the Bundesliga where he has already played on two occasions – but I would prefer him to go and play in a Premiership side so we can keep a close eye on him and measure his progress against our own standards.
We ended up winning the game against Palace 2 – 1, thanks to a Geremi free-kick at the end of the first half. For me this was nothing new, but with the trajectory he conjured up to beat the wall, many eyes were probably opened to the abilities of this young man, not least his shooting power. Perhaps a friendly against Crystal Palace on their own ground was not the ideal place for Geremi’s prowess at free-kicks to emerge, but now we all knew that this was one more weapon we could count on.
If anything surprised me at all, it was the number of people who had come out on a hot August afternoon to watch a friendly. There were over twenty thousand spectators in the stands. On the other hand, there were two factors at work here: the huge support given by Chelsea supporters anywhere and everywhere, which I was already familiar with, and the interest in our team shown by football fans generally, which I was coming to appreciate.
Three days later, and we had another friendly at Watford. Another win, and in terms of the scoreline an even more convincing one since we put four past them: Forssell, Hasselbaink, an own goal, and, finally, Duff. The boys were understandably a little tired after the work we had been doing, having trained twice the day before, morning and afternoon, but generally speaking their physical condition was very good, and the squad was taking shape as I wanted – indeed as we had all hoped, me and my staff, and the management. One particularly important aspect of the game against Watford was that we had Manu Petit back too, after the operation he underwent during the summer. Here is a player few can match for character, and for his influence on the field. He has won so much in his career, always leading from the front, and I know that if he stays fit, if I make the best use of him physically and psychologically, he can make a difference to this team. He only came on for 20 minutes to replace Lampard, but it was a significant return nonetheless.
For me and for the team, all this was a stimulus to be converted into success. For the press, it was a pressure situation. Pressure? Pressure is what I had at the start of my career with Campania Puteolana, when there was not enough money to pay wages, and unsavoury-looking types would be seen hovering around the ground. Pressure is something the Italian press know how to generate, when thirty or so journalists from newspapers, radio, commercial and network TV turn up at the training ground every day. When the fans are heavily opposed to what you are doing. When you are expected to get results while your club chairman is selling players instead of buying them. All this is pressure, but there is no pressure in having a team full of medal winners at your disposal and a chairman like Roman Abramovich who (on the basis of everything that had happened so far, obviously) always had a positive attitude and continued to bring in fabulous players. In any event, I knew well enough that a good start was needed, especially if we were to avoid idle rumours springing up from outside. And a good start meant doing well in our first two away games: the Champions League qualifying round, and the opening Premiership fixture at Anfield.
We knew our objectives, the difficulties we would face in pursuing them, and how we intended to go about things. We knew all our Premiership opponents. What we did not know yet was who we would be facing in our first Champions League fixture. So, because I prefer to leave nothing – but nothing – to