Ahead of Chelsea’s potentially record-breaking match against AFC Bournemouth on Saturday, revitalized inside forward Pedro sat down with the Telegraph’s Matt Law for an interview. Topics for discussion included last season’s troubles, this season’s successes, and the challenge of the Premier League.
INTERVIEW: Antonio Conte's rapid revolution at Chelsea is built on trust, says Pedro #cfc https://t.co/PJnP3R5vYl
— Matt Law (@Matt_Law_DT) December 25, 2016
I encourage you to click over and read the whole thing; here are three quotes that stood out to me.
On last season:
“It was about everything, everything just wasn’t right. We were very low in the league, the spirits were very low, the trust was very low, everything was going wrong. It made it very difficult to be fit, to be in a good position. It was just the whole thing – it wasn’t right.”
Diego Costa recently talked about Mourinho (and the bib-throwing incident) as well, but as Pedro says, it’s impossible to pin down just one reason or even one catalyst for the whole fiasco. The “whole thing” was wrong and it certainly felt like it.
But this is season everything’s right, and we have Conte to thank for that.
“He’s been really, really good. In my career, I have worked with really good managers, like Pep Guardiola and Vicente del Bosque. But one thing that has really surprised me about Antonio is how he managed to turn around the team so quickly.”
“He put trust and belief in all of the players and then we started winning matches [...] We started to go really well, our trust started growing and everything became really positive. We’ve got a lot of trust and that really helps. One of the key things is the trust we have with everybody. Everybody trusts each other and it means we work really well together as a team.”
Soo... something about trust then? Trust in the hard work. Fight and trust. Trust and always improve.
Pedro says Conte is the manager who’s made him work the hardest in his career; but when the methods are working so obviously well, it’s hard not to trust it. A few recent-ish reports had hinted at Chelsea players finding training “boring”, in a way, due to its often repetitive nature, but when the benefits are clear for all to see, everybody buys in 100 per cent.
Especially if it gets us the title.
“I would love to win the Premier League because it’s the strongest league in the world and I think that would be something really good for my career.”
-Pedro; source: Telegraph
Forza.