'Mourinho straight away was on him' - Mikel reveals what went wrong for 2004 Ballon d'Or winner at Chelsea

Super Eagles legend John Obi Mikel has explained why he thinks Ukraine legend Andriy Shevchenko struggled at Premier League giants Chelsea.  

Chelsea reportedly broke the British transfer record to sign Shevchenko on a four-year deal in 2006.

Shevchenko arrived at Stamford Bridge with a huge reputation - having won the Serie A, Coppa Italia, UEFA Champions League and Super Cup at Italian giants AC Milan.

The Ukrainian won the 2004 Ballon d'Or, beating the likes of Deco, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney and Ruud van Nistelrooy to the prestigious accolade, and was the top scorer in the Serie A for the 1999-2000 and 2003–2004 seasons.

Of all the big-name players signed by Chelsea, Shevchenko is, to this day, regarded as one of the biggest flops but had a descent goalscoring record as a Chelsea player, mustering 34 goal involvements in 77 matches across all competitions. 

Mikel reckons that the AC Milan legend was not at his best when he moved to Chelsea because of fitness issues and the Ukrainian became paranoid that the Chelsea players were ganging up on him. 

"What a good player he was in Italy but when you look at Andriy he was a quiet, simple guy, he never spoke much. You never got a word out of him, he didn't socialize enough with the players, he was always on his own, but a great, lovely guy," Mikel said on The Obi One Podcast. 

"He came to Chelsea when he was 30, 31, you could tell he was coming towards the end of his career. He wasn't sharp enough. Mourinho straight away was on him during the training. He could see he wasn't up to speed, he wasn't quick enough, he wasn't sharp enough.

"We were all there trying to help him, at some point Andriy thought everybody was just against him. He thought the whole players were against him, nobody wanted him to perform well because Didier was there, we're all behind Didier.

"That started playing in his head. When you have that as a player and think everybody's against you, he didn't put the work during training and that really affected him when he was at Chelsea."

After two years at Chelsea, Shevchenko returned to AC Milan on a season-long loan, before rejoining Dynamo Kyiv, where he called time on his career in 2012.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel

Photo Credit: chelseafc.com

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