Mourinho maltreated them; Mikel Obi opens up about his time with Salah and De Bruyne

Mourinho maltreated them; Mikel Obi opens up about his time with Salah and De Bruyne.

Mikel Obi have recalled his time at Chelsea with the now superstars when Jose Mourinho was their head coach and he has recounted the stress and maltreatment the Chelsea players felt under him and how they had reacted to these things.

Here is what he said.

“I think [Salah] was having a bad game and then obviously Mourinho came in and ripped into him, massively ripped into him,” he said to Dubai Eye.

“He was in tears, and what happened is [Mourinho] didn’t let him back onto the pitch in the second half. He took him off.

“It would have been easy to just take him off and say: ‘You’re not playing well, off you go, sit down, you’re not going back onto the pitch’. But he ripped into him and took him off.”

Salah would go on to make just 13 Premier League appearances for Chelsea before moving to Italy to play for Fiorentina and AS Roma, then returning to England under Liverpool’s colours where he has become a huge success.

In 286 appearances, the Egyptian has scored 174, assisted 70 and won the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup.

But he is not the only one that got away, and De Bruyne was another on Chelsea’s books, though Mikel delved into what the Belgian maestro was like as a youngster.

“Kevin was always a stroppy guy, he was always on his own, he was always moody, he was always grumpy,” he added.

“You could never get anything out of him. But now when I watch him play… what a joy.”

De Bruyne had a similar exit plan to Salah in that he was loaned out before joining a team permanently, this time Werder Bremen and then Wolfsburg.

A Premier League super club then came in for the playmaker as City snapped him up just a year after he left Chelsea for good, and he has since forged a legacy at the Etihad as one of their best-ever players.

In 337 appearances for City, De Bruyne has scored 90 times and assisted 139 goals, winning four Premier League titles along the way.