Former captain of the Super Eagles of Nigeria John Obi Mikel have lifted the lid on how he was forced out of Chelsea after eleven seasons by former coach Antonio Conte.
Conte was hired as coach in 2016 and for the first time in Obi’s stay at Chelsea he found himself not in the plans of the manager hence his decision to leave the team for Chinese side Tiajin Teda.
“ “There were tears in my eyes,” he tells The Athletic. “I parked around the corner. I just had to take a minute. There was the realisation that this was it for me and Chelsea.
“For 11 years I had done the same thing, had the same locker, driven to the same place every day. Chelsea was my second home. I was often there from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. I was there more than I was in my own home.”
Mikel said their fall out stemmed from when he decided that he want to honor a call up as one of the over age players in Nigeria U23 squad to the Olympics in Rio as it’s the only tournament missing from his cv at international level.
“I had been called up by my national team to play and it was a dream,” he says. “It’s a dream for anyone to go to the Olympics. Yes, as players we want to win the Champions League and the World Cup, but the Olympics is a massive tournament.”
Mikel continues: “This guy (Conte) who has just walked in the door for five minutes is telling me I had to choose. He was saying, ‘If you do that, you won’t be a part of this team’. I spoke to the club and told them that I wanted to go. The club respected me because of what I had done for them and how long I’d been there. So off I went and I felt punished for that. I came back and I didn’t make the squad. I was never in the squad list on match days again.
According to Mikel, Conte did offer him a chance to be a part of the squad but he turned it down as he has already made up his mind to bring his stay at the club to an end.
“The funny thing is, just before the January window was going to start, he came up to me and said ‘I want a meeting with you’. This was after making me train on my own for months, treating a player who had been at Chelsea for a long time like this!
“When he tried to meet with me he was like, ‘Let’s try and make up, I will need you in the team, let’s squash this, blah, blah, blah!’. I was like, ‘Are you joking?! Are you fucking serious?!’ He knew I wanted out. I stood up and walked out of the room. You can’t disrespect a human being like that.
“I couldn’t wait for the window to open to get out. I was talking to the hierarchy and explaining that I would definitely have to go. And they agreed, they understood.”
On why he stuck to his decision to leave the team despite the route back by the coach, Mikel said it was evident from the get to that the coach never liked him.
“From the very first day, he did not like me for some reason,” Mikel claims. “After everything I had done… yes, I wasn’t a Drogba scoring goals and this and that, but I gave loyalty. I helped the club. I helped win trophies. I played in most of the finals: Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup.
“I was a big part of the team so to be treated like that by a manager who had been there for a few minutes was very disappointing. It was nothing to do with the hierarchy, I had a good relationship with them. They treated me fairly until the end.”
