Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho and Mohamed Salah at Stamford Bridge in 2014
Ex-Chelsea star John Obi Mikel has revealed how his then-manager Jose Mourinho brought Mohamed Salah to tears with a scathing half-time rant.
Salah endured a disastrous first stint in the Premier League after he joined Chelsea in January 2014 from Swiss outfit Basel.
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Just a year later, the Egypt international was loaned out to Fiorentina, spending six months at the Florence club before a season-long loan spell with AS Roma, who would go on to sign him permanently in July 2016 in a €15 million (R291 million) deal.
The two-time African Footballer of the Year made just 19 appearances overall for the Blues, with the man at the Stamford Bridge helm at the time, Mourinho, believed to not be a huge admirer of the forward.
Chelsea and Nigeria legend Mikel has now opened up about one particular incident in the dressing room that left the current Liverpool forward in shreds.
“I think [Salah] was having a bad game and then obviously Mourinho came in and ripped into him, massively ripped into him,” he told radio station Dubai Eye.
“He was in tears, and what happened is [Mourinho] didn’t let him back on to the pitch in the second half. He took him off.
“It would have been easy to just take him off and say ‘you’re not playing well, off you go, sit down, you’re not going back on to the pitch’.
“But he ripped into him and took him off.”
Mikel went on to add why he thinks things did not work out at Chelsea for the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku, who also endured a tough time under the Portuguese boss.
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“Kevin was always a stroppy guy, he was always on his own, he was always moody, he was always grumpy. You could never get anything out of him,” the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations winner explained.
“But now, when I watch him play… what a joy. What a joy to watch.
“You can also say with [Romelu] Lukaku as well, he went to Inter Milan but he went back and it didn’t work out.
“But when I look at the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Mo Salah, what they’ve become now, the best players in the world, it’s amazing to see.
“They’ve become physically stronger, they’ve become faster. I don’t know what happened to them!”
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