Chelsea icon reveals he turned down Manchester United; talks about his new role at club

Claude Makelele reveals that he turned down Manchester United and Inter Milan before joining Chelsea

Speaking to FourFourTwo (h/t football.london), former Chelsea midfielder Claude Makelele opened about interest from Manchester United and Inter Milan in 2003 and the new role he now has at the club.

Makelele joined Chelsea in 2003 but revealed that he had interest from other clubs. However, he says that he made the Blues a promise he wasn’t willing to break. (h/t football.london)

I went to Chelsea because they came in first. After that, several other teams approached me, including Manchester United and Inter, who had tried to sign me before I moved to Real.

Due to the way things were happening at Madrid, I told Chelsea, ‘If I go, I’ll come to you.’ I gave them a promise. They went to great lengths to sign me, as I was 30 by then but they still paid a significant transfer fee [£16.8m].”

Makelele joined Chelsea during an era where the club went under a change of ownership under Roman Abramovich. Speaking about the impact of the new ownership on the club, Makelele said that Abramovich made Chelsea a destination for world-class players.

“That’s what the boss did very well because, before then, those kinds of players would move to Manchester United or Arsenal.”

Makelele won 5 trophies in his 5-year stay at Chelsea which included 2 Premier League titles, one FA Cup, and two League Cups. The Frenchman said that he left the club in 2008 to be close to his family.

The Frenchman retired from playing football in 2011 and took up coaching, returning to Chelsea in 2019 as a technical mentor at the club’s academy.

Talking about his role at Chelsea, Makelele believes that he is gaining the necessary experience from his current job to take the next step in the near future.

“It was nice to return to Stamford Bridge with some other former team-mates like Frank Lampard and Petr Cech.

I’m working as a technical mentor for the academy and loan players, which I find very interesting as I deal with a lot of different departments. You speak with the players about their performances on the pitch, and about their personal development off the pitch.”

Makelele featured 219 times for us during his time at the club. Safe to say that he had a huge role in Chelsea establishing ourselves as the superpowers of English football in the early parts of the millennium.