Ruud Gullit: Portrait of a Genius. Harry Harris

move he makes is watched in Europe. Powerful teams like AC Milan will be aware of what he achieves. The biggest clubs want the very best, which is why Cruyff ended up at Barcelona.

      â€˜It’s different for English managers. It seems they have to be successful for three or four years at a club before they are considered to be among the best. But in Europe people move about much more. Everything’s a stage in their career for them. But I’d love it if Ruud stays at Chelsea for years and really builds something. It’s great to see Chelsea up there among the best. What the club must do is build over a period of time. It’s what I’ve set out to do at Brentford and I like to feel we’re reaping the rewards. That’s why it pleases me to see youngsters like Morris, Myers and Duberry making an impact at Chelsea alongside the big-money Italian signings.’

      Gullit hired Ade Mafe, an Olympic 200-metre finalist and Linford Christie’s former training partner, as fitness trainer. Mafe’s mission was to help the players increase their speed over short distances and to develop their stamina and upper body strength. Gullit saw Mafe’s appointment as helping to address the club’s failure of not being able to hold onto the lead, which happened on 17 occasions in Hoddle’s final year at Chelsea. The improvement was seen early in the 1996/97 season: Chelsea were stronger in the final 15 minutes than they had been in the previous season and were less likely to make fatigue-induced errors. Gullit said: ‘We scored late goals against Middlesbrough and Arsenal and that proved we still had strength at the end of games.’

      Mafe had moved into the lucrative world of personal fitness training before being snapped up as part of Ruud’s backroom team. ‘It is really good to be back in the elite sporting world again. I feel this is a good challenge and I love a challenge. I’m working on the players’ speed off the mark, their leg strength, agility, reaction times and awareness – all things we had to do for athletics that are applicable to soccer.’

      But he’s reluctant to take credit for the resurgence in the team’s fortunes or their vast improvement in the last third of their games. ‘What has happened is down to Ruud and a new era starting. I’m just a small part of the whole and I want to see the team succeed.’

      Ex-Olympian champion and true-Blue fan Sebastian Coe knows Ade well. Both travelled to Los Angeles in 1984 as part of the British Olympic team. ‘The science and technique of training in English football has been something that’s been overlooked for years. Ruud Gullit has recognised that no Continental club would consider training to be something that took place between 10am and midday. I know the Italian set-up well, having lived in Italy for some time, and it’s a full-time 9am to 5pm job with work on technique and conditioning.’ Coe points out, though, that athletes have been employed as coaches before in English football training. ‘Norman Whiteside is one example. He was taught sprinting techniques by Olympic gold medallist Mary Peters. But this is more the exception than the rule. Lessons can also be learned from other sports. If you look at the success of the England rugby union side, it has been based on athletic technique.’

      Gullit has effected a Continental-style revolution that started with Ade. Gullit said: ‘Ade has done an excellent job. The players are much fitter now and some go out and do extra work by themselves. Now they understand that if they take care of their bodies then they can last longer in the game.’

      Dan Petrescu is used to such methods from Italian football. ‘All Ruud is trying to do is to bring Italy’s more professional approach to training to Chelsea. Ade is something new in English football, as he is the first fitness coach in the Premier League. But in Italy the use of fitness coaches is not unusual. Some of the English players were surprised in pre-season how hard the training was. Perhaps they are not used to training as hard as players in Italy. “We are not horses,” they said. But we should be thoroughbreds, because the games here are so much quicker than in Italy.’

      As for Gullit’s transition from player to manager, Petrescu said: ‘Ruudi likes to laugh and joke, but he can also stand apart from us and do what a manager must do. We know he is not happy when we do not play well – even if we win. But he inspires us to play better.’

      Gullit’s laid-back manner hides his desire to be as successful a manager as he was a player. Early in the 1996/97 season Dennis Wise said: ‘We are all encouraged to put forward our views. He is happy to listen to them. He laughs when we moan but almost always says: “Go out and enjoy yourselves and score some goals.” This is my seventh season at Chelsea. I’ve been in four semi-finals and one final and haven’t won anything for my club. Ruud’s attitude is so positive. He wants to win something, and so do I. He makes me believe I will as he does the rest of the team, because he gives us that little bit extra. In fact, this season it’s more than a little bit extra with the players he has bought.’

      Chelsea were the original fashionable club of the swinging 1960s. Raquel Welch once sat alongside Dickie Attenborough at the Bridge – there was no trendier place to be seen. Alan Hudson was the all-time crowd favourite, the trend-setter. Alan says Gullit has brought the buzz back to the famous borough of Kensington and Chelsea. ‘This is the nearest we’ve ever got to the atmosphere of the late 1960s and early 1970s. You can still sense it when there isn’t even a game on. The club has been very dour for a long time, but Stamford Bridge now is alight.’

      Less than two miles from Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport, nestles the serene setting of Chelsea’s Harlington training headquarters. In the past, only a handful of journalists would assemble for pre-match briefings. Now the place is constantly under siege. Schoolchildren, families, fans and just the curious swell the ranks of onlookers to catch a glimpse of Gullit and the foreign stars. Youngsters just want to touch Gullit. So many turn up that crash barriers manned by overworked guards who also patrol the pitch are now a familiar sight.

      Early in the 1996/97 season Scott Minto said: ‘There are so many people who turn up at our training ground that I have had to tell the stewards guarding the entrance that I’m a player and had to ask them to let me drive in for training. It is amazing really to think that the club has attracted players like Vialli, Zola and Gullit. I wouldn’t have thought I would be playing with players like them when I joined from Charlton two years ago.’

      One of England’s finest-ever imported players, Ossie Ardiles, is now enjoying a managerial renaissance in Japan. He arrived from South America with Ricardo Villa to experience the original culture shock. Back at his Hoddeston home on a break from his managerial successes in Japan, he told me: ‘I think coming to London is a big advantage for Gullit and his Italian signings. It is a big, big difference living in the capital than living, say, in the north of England. There is a big Argentinian community in London that helped me to settle, and there is similarly a large Italian community in the capital. The cosmopolitan Chelsea area, in particular, is definitely conducive to keeping star foreign players happy.’

      Also in the club’s favour is that Gullit can contend with settling-in difficulties. Having made big international moves he can empathize with his foreign stars and help them to adjust. An added complication, however, is that Chelsea’s culture shock has been two-way. While the Italians have had to adjust, so too have the British players. The bangers and mash brigade, led by that typically chirpy cockney Dennis Wise, have had to alter their eating habits to follow the Continental approach extended from the Hoddle regime. Routine food allergy tests are conducted to examine whether anything has been absorbed into the players’ bodies that might affect their performance. Erland Johnson was told to steer clear of lager – a big blow for the Norwegian! Ruud has had to cut down on bread, coffee and chocolate, and Jakob Kjeldbjerg was warned off lettuce. Then there is the Frenchman Frank Lebeouf. The new delicacy he brought to the training ground canteen was cornflakes in his cup of tea! Sometimes he eats his breakfast cornflakes with apple juice out of the bowl.

      Like others, Minto pinpoints the beginning of Chelsea’s transformation to the date Hoddle signed Gullit. ‘Things have changed much more since Ruud has taken over. Training has been a little more relaxed – apart from the five-a-sides. We have a fiver a man on those