Terry picks out three players who took Chelsea to ‘another level’
John Terry claims that Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli and Gianfranco Zola took Chelsea to “another level” in terms of nutrition and fitness.
Terry will go down as one of the Blues’ greatest players, having played 717 times in all competitions for the club, while helping the club win five Premier League titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups, a Europa League and a Champions League.
The former England international joined Chelsea’s academy from West Ham in 1995 before making his Blues debut in 1998.
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He was fortunate enough to see how the likes of Gullit, Vialli and Zola changed the culture at the club as he was coming through the ranks at Stamford Bridge.
“Compared to what it’s like today, it [the professionalism of players] is black and white, complete opposites,” Terry told former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen on 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 straightaway and be home by 1pm.
“We were lucky at Chelsea because we signed Zola, Gullit and Vialli and they turned up at the training ground and said, ‘where’s the food, where’s the protein? We need a bigger gym, we need to stretch more’.
“They took it to another level and I was really lucky to be around those players at that stage of my career. Gianfranco would get in two hours before anyone else, he would go to the gym for a weight session, he would stretch for two hours after training.
“He would eat the right food and those guys just took it to another level and it’s probably gone on another five or six levels from there to where we are today.”
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