ON CAPTAINS…

‘Dennis Wise would be the instant one for me that I looked up to. Being in and around him, even when I wasn’t part of the first team, you could see the impact he had. You always heard him, being on the training pitch next to him, and he was always motivating people. And just the way he trained as well, because sometimes people think being captain is about being the loudest, being this, but sometimes it’s setting the right precedent and training the right way so that everyone follows suit.

‘I think he definitely had that about him. He was by far the main one. Even around the dressing room, he brought people together. He didn’t let younger players take the mick, and kept everyone in check – myself, at times, as well.

‘I used to clean his boots. He wanted his boots perfect. I used to take really good care of them: I used to Vaseline them and stuff like that. They were about size 2½! No, they were small but he was about a size 6 or something. I used to have put newspaper inside them to keep the shape and make sure they were dry for the game. He wanted them right. From day one he pulled me and said, “Listen, these are the tools of my trade. I want everything right about them so when I go into my game the last thing I’m thinking about is my boots.” Hearing that from him meant you took notice. Every now and then he gave me a little bonus, so every time he scored I was on £25, which was half my wages at the time! I used to be praying we’d get a penalty or he’d score or something.

‘He was really close to me and took me under his wing as well. I learnt an awful lot from him. I still see and speak to Wisey of course. He doesn’t like it when I say to him, “Listen, I looked up to you as my hero and to get to clean your boots… ” He’s a little bit humbled by it: “Leave it, leave it.” He doesn’t want to go into it. But that’s him: he didn’t try and be a captain.

‘For me captaincy is all about on the training pitch and on the field. It was for the likes of Wisey, Kevin Hitchcock, Jody Morris, Michael Duberry… all those players enabled me to be me on the football pitch, because off the pitch I had the utmost respect for all of them, all my peers and fellow professionals. But on the pitch, you know, I would go in and win tackles against first team players, and it was a little bit, I remember at the time people were going, “Ooh, you can’t do that.” Sometimes, the foreign guys especially, didn’t like it. Dan Petrescu, once, he got me round the throat, and said “What do you think you’re doing?!” The first one over, to back me up, was Wisey: “If you’ve got something to say, you say it to me, not the younger players.” Me and Dan laugh about it now.

‘Off the pitch I’d do anything for them: make their tea, coffees, even silly things: sit on the toilet to make the seat warm for them in the cold winter days at the training ground. Bizarre when you think about it, but that was part of it, growing up. I had all those players like Wisey and Dubes to look up to and they looked after me as well. It meant a lot to me.

‘I apply a lot of things in my captaincy from many different people. We were lucky at Chelsea because I obviously had Wisey initially, then we had the likes of Marcel Desailly, Frank Leboeuf, those big characters who had won big things, who go about it in a completely different way.

‘When he spoke in the dressing room at half-time and stuff people obviously listened to Wisey, and being a young kid around that you got to see it. Marcel didn’t speak often but when he did everyone was like, “He’s got something to say here,” and you could literally hear a pin drop.

‘I asked Marcel, “Why? Why do you not speak as much as the others?” I was a young kid but he had time for me. He said, “Listen, if you speak too much people get used to your voice. When I speak it means something.” Little things like that, I just took it all in and tried to be the best I could, really. For me, the fundamentals are training in the right manner, every single day. Wise did that, Marcel did that, even after winning the World Cup. Setting the example at the very top. Having won everything in football, Marcel still training the way he did every day was incredible for me to see. For me there was no better learning curve than that.’

LEADERS…

‘There is only one manager. I think Lamps has said it as well, the way he made you feel, individually. He made a massive impact on the club, for sure. He made a group of players – good players at the time – feel like we were the best in the world. Whether we were or not, we felt it. You see that in the performances as well.

‘You could immediately tell he knew how to draw the best out of everyone. So individually, I remember when he first signed, you get a text message or a phone call from him. Even when he came back this time, you get that little phone call saying “I need you to hit the ground running. People have written you off.” It’s just inspiring and, for me, there’s no better at drawing the best out of people than Jose Mourinho.

‘He knows what buttons to press. It goes unnoticed a little bit. He knows what makes me tick. He knows if I make a mistake he can tell me – some players you can’t. It’s handling different players differently and he does it superbly.

‘Then again it comes down to the fundamentals with training. He wants the best out of everyone on a daily basis. You look at some of the world class players we’ve had, Juan Mata, David Luiz, players like that who’ve left the club, he’s seen something – I don’t know what – to let those big players go. And again, he makes judgment calls and he gets them right.

‘There are so many, more than 50 or 60, big moments I can think of that sum him up. Sometimes you’re losing a game at half-time, which doesn’t happen often at this club, and you expect to come in and get a rollicking. And you come in and the manager is calm, collected – the complete opposite. And he’s like, “Listen, we’re going to win the game. We’re going to get an early goal… ” And he talks you through it. I’ve had managers before who say the same thing, but when he talks it comes from his heart. He firmly believes it. If he didn’t think it, he wouldn’t say it.

‘Other times you’ll be winning two or three nil and you’ll come in happy at half-time and he’ll go ballistic. Tables will go over, bottles of water will go flying. You think, “Where’s that come from?” But you go out for the second half and win the game 5-0 rather than scraping through 3-1, 3-2.

‘Those little details. He knows when players take their foot off the gas. He can sense something before the game. He just gets a feel for everyone and every single game. And I look at that and think no one else has got that that I’ve experienced.

‘Man-management, Carlo Ancelotti is up there and a real great guy, someone I loved working with. Those two would be the main ones for me.’

LEGENDS…

‘It’s difficult to pin-point one or two behind the scenes legends but I would say the medical team collectively. They’re doing everything we are and they are real unsung heroes, unnoticed. You look at the help they have given myself, or Ashley Cole before the Champions League final.

‘Ash was up till three, four o’ clock in the morning, running the corridors with the physios to make sure he’s right for the evening. It’s stuff like that people never hear about, but they do so much work and get you prepared for, or even through big games – sometimes you don’t know how.

‘You sometimes have a day off and you ask the physios to come in. You know, they’re away from the families, and they could have been up till two, three o’clock doing their normal massages because they have to get around the squad of 20 players. For me, they’re the unsung heroes who go unnoticed.

‘When you look at the injury and rehab record of other big clubs we are very good here. We’re multicultural as well. Obviously the squad is too, so if you had just loads of English masseurs and physios, it might not work. We haven’t. We’ve got a mixture of Spanish, Brazilian, French, and it works well with the team because players like to speak their own language, like to work with certain people, and that’s how it is.

‘We’ve definitely adapted to that and it’s helped for sure. It’s about attention to detail again. And if it works for someone, it’s a success. I look at some other clubs and you can just see English people in their medical teams. I’m not saying that doesn’t work, because it worked for us for a little bit. But as the game changed, we evolved a lot quicker than everyone else. That definitely has a massive effect.’

ON A FAVOURITE STAMFORD BRIDGE MOMENT…

‘For me personally my greatest memory of Stamford Bridge was the goal against Barcelona that night. Massive night, Champions League, against one of the best teams… I think ever. And to do what we did that night was incredible. No one really expected us to win or go through but we managed to do it and played very well. The manager running on the pitch. Noisy atmosphere. Memories you will never forget.

‘Collectively I look at the Bayern Munich game, Lampsy’s goal, when he chested it, turned and spun. Unbelievable. There’ve been so many great goals at the Bridge but I look that Bayern Munich game. They were a big, powerful side and that was probably the best goal I’ve ever seen at the Bridge. And being by Lamps just topped it off.

‘Those big Champions League nights mean a lot and obviously recently we’re really disappointed about the PSG result. The Champions League nights don’t feel more special than other games. But I think we all realise it’s such a big competition, so hard, and we have had so many ups and downs over the years, that it does take something extraordinary. The year we won it you could probably say we didn’t deserve to win it, but the three or four years before we probably did deserve to win it and didn’t. Barcelona last minute at the Bridge!

‘It’s those nights that make you hungry and, as you say, under the floodlights, those big atmospheres, everyone’s up for it, it means so much to everyone. I remember early days standing alongside Marcel. Champions League was new to Chelsea then. And the music came on and he said to me, “This is what it is about. Listen to this Champions League music.” And when it comes on now I just think of him in my ear next to me. Little things along the way you put in the memory bank.’

ON ADVICE HE WOULD OFFER HIS TEENAGE SELF…

‘One of the best questions ever! I think as I’ve got older I’ve learned to deal with losing. When I was younger we’d lose a game and I would not go out of the house for literally three or four days. It’s different now I’ve got a family and kids, and you have to get up and about, take them to school. Before I would shut myself away. That would be the advice I would give: that things move on quickly and you can make amends. That is the Chelsea way. It’s what we’ve grown to know.

‘I’m not sitting here saying I didn’t lose sleep after the Paris Saint-Germain game recently – I didn’t sleep a wink all night. It would be horrible if I did. If I got home and went to sleep, for me something would be telling me, “You know what? Time’s up.” If you’re not caring, something’s gone. But I do realise as well that there’s a game three or four days later and you have to pick yourself up, you have to go again. You can’t dwell on it. When I was younger I dwelt too much on a performance and so the next game suffered. Now you realise games come thick and fast. Move on, there are bigger and better things ahead. And for sure at this club trophies are going to be coming.’