Sports

Mikel Obi talks up Hazard Chelsea’s diet issues, Salah’s woeful stint

By Olaleye Oluwadamilola

Posted on February 17, 2023

Mikel Obi, former Super Eagles captain, has reminisced back on his time while at Chelsea in a lengthy interview as he talks up Eden Hazard’s diet while at the club and Mohammed Salah’s woeful.

The duo of Salah and Hazard have since left the London club with Salah going on to join Liverpool and Eden Hazard joining Spanish giants, Real Madrid.

Mikel and Hazard who joined from Lille after Chelsea’s 2012 Champions League win both shared five trophy laden years together at Stamford Bridge with coaches like, Jose Mourinho who is currently Roma’s manager, Rafa Benitez, Guus Hiddink and Antonio Conte who is in Tottenham Hotspurs now.

The Nigeria power house midfielder left the club in 2017 under Italian manager, Antonio Conte while the Belgian left in 2019 after the club’s Europa League triumph under the now Lazio’s coach, Maurizio Sarri to Real Madrid.

He revealed that despite being a match-winner on the pitch, his Belgian team-mate was the ‘laziest footballer he has seen in his life’ but admitted he got away with it due to his standout performances on matchday.

“Everybody wants to be in the starting XI come the weekend and there is no place for you to be like I don’t want to train today”.

“The only player I saw do that and get away with it was Eden Hazard,” Mikel told Dubai Eye.

“I actually think when you look at him now he has lost a lot of weight,” said Mikel Obi.

“But when he was at Chelsea the night before a game after dinner, he sits there for like 20 minutes, half an hour, eating rice pudding. He likes his food.”

“Then he goes to bed, wakes up on a Saturday morning and is there, he produces. We just let him do whatever he wants,” he added.

“He never trained. The worst. The laziest footballer I have ever seen in my life. But then come the weekend he produces and was man of the match. He comes in then and was like “come on guys you see.”

Hazard starred during seven years at the Premier League giants, lifting two Premier League titles, two Europa Leagues, an FA Cup, and a League cup, before departing for Real Madrid in 2019.

On Liverpool forward, Mohammed Salah’s stint, Mikel revealed how Jose Mourinho once left Mohamed Salah in tears at Chelsea after berating the Egyptian over a poor performance and taking him off at half-time.

Salah spent two-and-a-half years with the Blues after completing an £11million move from Basel in January 2014, yet the majority of that time was spent out on loan after a difficult first half-season under Mourinho.

And Mikel has revealed that Salah felt the full wrath of Mourinho during a ‘bad game’ for Chelsea against Norwich in 2014, which left him visibly emotional in the dressing room.

“I think Salah was having a bad game and then obviously Mourinho came in and ripped into him, massively ripped into him.”

“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 onto the pitch and he ripped into him and took him off.”

“Salah has since gone on to become one of the best players in world football at Liverpool, scoring 174 goals in 286 games for the Reds while winning the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup.

In his debut campaign at Anfield, he took the Premier League by storm, setting a top-flight record for the most goals in a 38-game season with an astonishing 32.