John Terry reveals what happened in team meeting after PSG
Many people would have loved to have been a fly-on-the-wall at Cobham the day after we had been knocked out of the Champions League by PSG. Jose Mourinho had stated in his TV interview after the game that he wanted to remain calm, analyse and then speak to his players the following day. John Terry has revealed for the first time what happened that day.
He said:
“Things were said by the manager and a few players spoke. Sometimes they [the meetings] are good, sometimes they don’t work.
“The importance of it was to speak after the game, get it over with, everyone say their thoughts and feelings, which they did, and then it’s time to move on.
“There is no time to dwell on things. It was an open discussion, we went out and trained and that was the end of it. [In the Champions League] we obviously have to come back stronger and more experienced next year.”
It's vitally important that this happened in my view. There was obviously something wrong because for Chelsea to play they way they did as a team against ten men was unacceptable and <we got exactly what we deserved!
I like hearing the fact that people had freedom to talk and express their feelings in the open environment that Jose Mourinho had encouraged.
That takes me back to Carlo Ancelotti's time here at Chelsea in his first season. We had hit a bumpy spell in the League and certain results were not good so one of these meetings was called. People were able to do the same as with Mourinho, players spoke and the manager got his message across. The air was cleared as a result and we went onto win our first Double (Premier League and FA Cup).
Let's hope we do not see a repeat of the PSG performance between now and the end of the season. Although we are not playing well, we are still picking up points and maintaining a gap to our rivals.
The international break has come at the right time and hopefully, we can regroup after it, and get back to playing better and winning comfortably against Stoke in a couple of weeks time!