Former Super Eagles captain, John Mikel Obi, has cast his mind back to the beginning of his successful career and recalled how his coach at Chelsea, Jose Mourinho and a senior player in the team, Claude Makelele, helped ignite his career by changing the position he played on the field.
Sports247 recalls that Mikel twinkled as an attacking midfielder in his early days at Pepsi Football Academy and Plateau United of Jos, from where he moved to Lyn Oslo of Norway in 2005 to start a promising professional career overseas.
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However, after excelling in the same role while helping Nigeria win silver at the 2005 FIFA U20 World Cup in the Netherlands, Mikel suddenly started playing as a defensive midfielder when he joined Chelsea in 2006.
Dramatically, Mikel was almost not going to make that move to Stamford Bridge, as he had already been unveiled at Manchester United, only for The Blues to pull the carpet from under that deal and he ended up spending 11 highly successful years with the London-based English Premier League giants.
The Nigerian star, who also played for Middlesbrough and Stoke City of England as well as Tianjin TEDA of China, Trabzonspor of Turkey and SC Kuwait in the Middle East, has now shot his mind back to the very beginning, tagging Makelele as his mentor and Mourinho his motivator for the transformation they gave his career.
Mikel disclosed, “When I joined the club, Mourinho said to me at a meeting, ‘I know you are a number 10, but you know at the club now I have a lot of number 10s. But, this man here (Makelele) is leaving in six months because his contract is done.
“So, this is where I want you to play. I want you to play as a holding midfielder because I know you’re going to be good at it. You don’t give the ball away. You are young and strong, and you can hold the ball.’ That’s how Mourinho changed my role in the field.”
Mikel confessed that he did not immediately agree with Mourinho because he actually preferred playing the attacking role, but he was also encouraged by Makelele, who eventually spent two more years with the London club before moving and taught the Nigerian lad how to be a reliable holding midfielder.
Mikel, who went on to play 372 matches for Chelsea from 2006 to 2017 and scored six goals within that period, added, “I remember having that conversation with Mourinho, but I was thinking something different. I wanted to be myself, but he said that was the position available for me. So, I had to push my ego aside.
“He told me I would get recognised, get into the limelight and get mentioned in newspapers. He said I would also be talked about and see my story in The Sun, even when Lampard or Drogba were scoring.”
‘The Catalyst,’ who captained Nigeria’s under-23 squad to win bronze at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, concluded by highlighting some of the assets he learnt from Makelele, which many experts always agree helped him become one of the most talked about defensive midfielders in the EPL and make him still rank high among Chelsea’s all-time legends.
“I had my mentor to look up to. Makelele was absolutely special. Physically not big, but his timing was impeccable. The way he timed his tackles and read the game was awesome.
“That’s what I learnt from him … reading of the game, being in position at the right time, knowing the position you have to cover. It was all about being in the right place at the right time. I learnt that from Makelele,” Mikel reminisced.
