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Jose Mourinho has revealed that one of his Chelsea players from the 2004-05 Premier League-winning squad recently told him they could still outplay the current crop of Blues players. It’s been 20 years since Mourinho led the Blues to their first league title in 50 years.
Not only did they win the league title that campaign, but etched their name as one of the best title-winning teams in English top-flight history. In a recent interview with Telegraph Sport, along with former Blues players John Terry and Frank Lampard, Jose Mourinho said one of his former Blues players messaged to remind him of how good they were.
“One of these players of 2004-05, a few weeks ago, when Chelsea played Arsenal. One of the guys wrote me a message. I won’t tell you who it is, but the guy is now, I say, 45 years old, something like that. All of them are more or less 45. And one of them wrote to me, it was not John or Frank, and told me ‘boss, if you got together the 2004-05 team now and went on a training camp for two weeks, we would beat the current Chelsea team’.
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"Of course, it was a joke. But this was a message of we were so good, we were so, so strong that 45 years old, we train for two weeks and we beat the current Chelsea team. Between us, we are still a team,” Mourinho said.
Mourinho spent five years with Chelsea across two different stints. He won three Premier League titles at the club, along with other domestic titles.
“I don’t think it will ever be beaten’’ – Jose Mourinho on the 15 goals conceded by Chelsea in a single Premier League campaign
Jose Mourinho believed the defensive record set by his Chelsea side in the 2004-05 Premier League campaign would never be broken. In Mourinho’s first season at the west London club, they achieved a new high, shipping in just 15 goals across a 38-game league season.
The record was previously held by Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal of the 1998/99 campaign. But ever since Mourinho’s Blues rewrote the history books, the record has yet to be broken. The teams that have only come closest to equaling the feat have conceded 22 goals in a Premier League season (Liverpool 2018/19, Manchester United 2007/08, and Chelsea 2005/06).
Speaking about the record, Mourinho told Telegraph Sport:
“I don’t think it will ever be beaten, I feel it’s very, very difficult. And John is right. One thing [13] was until we became champions and then once we were champions the mentality changed. But let’s say it’s 15 conceded. It’s very, very difficult. I’m proud of it because it’s not a Petr Cech record, it’s not a John Terry record, or Gallas, or Carvalho record. It’s the record of everybody.
“The record of the first attacking player that was pressing, it’s the record of the way we defended set-pieces. It’s the record of that effort that everybody was doing. It’s the record of the tactical discipline. It’s the record of the responsibility. It’s the record of only a team can do it.”
