John Terry names the three players that took Chelsea to ‘another level’

 

John Terry has named three players that took Chelsea to ‘another level’ when he first joined the club.

 After spending four years at West Ham’s academy, Terry joined the Blues in 1995, going on to make his first-team debut for Chelsea three years later.

Over the following two decades, Terry established himself as one of Chelsea’s greatest-ever players and a Premier League legend.

He made more than 700 appearances for the Blues and finished his remarkable career with five Premier League titles, five FA Cups, and the Champions League.

While Chelsea was a major force in England and Europe by the end of Terry’s career, they were far more inconspicuous when he first burst onto the scene.

In fact, Terry says that Chelsea – like most clubs at the time – was still outdated off the pitch in terms of fitness, nutrition, and professionalism. That changed, Terry says, when football legends Gianfranco Zola, Ruud Gullit, and Gianluca Vialli arrived at Stamford Bridge across two summers in 1995 and 1996.

‘Compared to what it’s like today, it [the professionalism of players] is black and white, complete opposites,’ Terry said during a conversation with the former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen on the platform Unacademy.

‘[At the start of my career] we would finish training and go upstairs and have burger and chips or sausage and mash.

It was just a couple of ladies who lived by the training ground who would cook the food. ‘There was no nutritional aspect. You would finish training, leave straight away, and be home by 1 pm.