Bournemouth defender Nathan Ake has said that former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho mentally broke him during his time at Stamford Bridge.
Ake joined the Chelsea youth academy in 2011 after previous spells with both ADO Den Haag and Feyenoord.
The Dutch international made just 17 appearances at the club before joining Bournemouth in 2017 but he said that he was hopeful of breaking into the first side until Jose Mourinho returned to the club.
“I went to the first team at Chelsea and played under Rafa Benitez and I always thought, ‘why is everyone saying setbacks are coming because everything is going up, up, up?
“The season after Benitez left I thought, ‘this is going to be my season’.
“Then Jose Mourinho came and, without training, I got dropped into the second team.That was one of the toughest things for me, mentally. I was quite broken.
“Everything was going great, I played a few games, I was young player of the year and then I was in the reserves again.”
Mourinho had a tetchy relationship with several young players at Chelsea but it was also some of the club’s senior figures and most beloved players that he also had issues with at times with John Terry revealing a time where he threatened to replace him for a training ground error.
“At every club he has had big characters and I’m not sure he has that at Manchester United at the moment. At Chelsea, he did. He embarrassed me after one pre-season, after we had won a league title.
“He stopped the training session, came in, threw down his pad. ‘If you keep giving the ball away, I will go and buy someone for £50 million’.
“I am thinking, ‘I played every game for you last season! And now you’re trying to humiliate me!’ I didn’t understand why he was doing that, but my instinct was to run and give everything; flying into tackles, winning the ball.”
