London: For Chelsea, the maths is simple. Win their eight remaining Premier League games and they will be crowned champions.
The Blues have already won the League Cup and now stand on the brink of a fourth Premier League title. In a Premier League title finale, which — barring a last minute wobble — seems to be destined for celebrations at Stamford Bridge, Thibaut Courtois exclusively told Gulf News that Chelsea mustn’t become complacent, urging the Blues to treat their title run-in as a sequence of finals.
“I think it’s how everybody has to think. You have to look at it as if it’s a final every game. We won one competition, we are running in one and the other two we are not playing anymore. So every week we can have a focus and a lift to that game and play as if it’s a final. That will help us to be at our best every game and finish the season well and be champions,” he said.
We met in the media room at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground, from where Jose Mourinho gives his weekly press conference. Moments earlier, on a training pitch bathed in early spring sunshine, Courtois and his teammates were finishing up after being put through their paces under the watchful eye of Mourinho and his coaching staff.
Signed for just £5 million from Belgian side Genk in 2011, Courtois spent three seasons on loan at Atletico Madrid, where he made his name under the astute guidance of coach Diego Simeone, tasting La Liga, King’s Cup, Europa League and Uefa Super Cup success.
The Belgian glovesman also came agonisingly close to a Champions League winners’ medal in his debut season in last year’s competition as Atletico were denied by an injury-time equaliser by city rivals Real, who went on to win the final 4-1 in extra time.
Loaned-out players usually aim to merely get regular playing experience, but Courtois redefined that notion and won silverware to boot.
And the 22-year-old is quick to pinpoint the similarities of his former and current coaches.
“I would say that they are two motivators. They know how to speak to a team, they know how to have good tactics before a game. But they are not the same in the way they make their training, how they have an approach sometimes to the players. In some ways they are equal, but in other ways they are completely the opposite.
“With Simeone, the first half in Atletico before he arrived, we conceded quite a few goals, then he helped us adapt to what kind of players we had and what kind of football we could play with them. I think with Simeone at Atletico we had a good defensive block, but also in front good players who are quick on the counter-attack. I think we played good football if we needed to.
“Here at this moment, Mourinho has a very good team and we are playing offensively well, and not like in a defensive block as we had at Atletico. I think it’s completely different.
“But it’s good if you have a manager who is demanding a lot. You have to be at your top every week and that’s what makes you a champion. If you maybe have a manger who is not demanding, then sometimes you relax and you lose games.”
Courtois is certainly a winner. His loan spell at Atletico may have been longer than many commentators felt it should have been, but then a certain Petr Cech was successfully holding sway at Stamford Bridge and that posed a selection headache for Mourinho. Despite the rivalry for Chelsea’s No. 1 spot, the two goalkeepers remain friends, and Courtois says Cech readily imparts his knowledge to him.
“Yes, we talk a lot. We start every day at training 40 minutes before the players and we always finish after them. We talk a lot and sometimes he can give advice on the Premier League that maybe I don’t know yet, and I think we have a good relationship.
“Obviously it’s not easy for him if you’re not playing a lot, but I think that for the team it’s really good that you know you have two top keepers and, if one is not playing because he’s injured, there’s another one ready to be there.”
Asked how he felt when Mourinho gave him the nod over Cech, Courtois recalled a time-honoured team selection tradition, but without an official word from Mourinho.
“Well, he never said it. You just see on the board there you will play and obviously it’s nice to know. But I also came back [from Spain] with the feeling ‘ok, if I come back, I want to play’. If after it’s not like that, then maybe it’s better to be loaned out again. But obviously when you come back you want to play and obviously Petr wants to play also, so it’s not an easy situation.
“We train on a very high level every day and that gives us [confidence] we can play always a good game. It’s not easy and a lot of goalkeepers would react differently and not in the way he has. But I think that’s the kind of person Petr is, he’s a great professional and a great human being.”
Growing up in Bree, a small town in the north-east of Belgium — his parents and sister accomplished volleyball players in their own right — Courtois happily talks of his love for volleyball, an active childhood where sport was a big focus and of when he too would face a sporting dilemma. Looking at him now and his still boyish looks, you realise that he isn’t that far along from those happy childhood memories.
“We were always playing in the street. Our street wasn’t very big, so there were a lot of young kids and every summer we would be going from one garden to another. In one garden, maybe we were playing a game on the trampoline, jumping, catching the ball. Then going to my house, where there was beach volleyball or beach football. Then we’d go to another home to play football and, on the streets, racing with bikes, so we were active in the summer.
“I had to stop the volleyball because I was doing both [that and football]. We would go three times a week to [football] training — it was the same days as volleyball. So right there, I decided to play football.
“When I was 11, I had a moment when I started as a goalkeeper, but then after half a year I was like ‘I would prefer to play more volleyball or be an outfield player then a goalkeeper’. So I had a difficult teenage moment. The transfer market in volleyball was closed, so I had to continue. It was OK, I really enjoyed it, I continued but it could have turned out differently.”
Different. That’s something which Courtois has had to contend with after a transition from La Liga to the Premier League, but a challenge nevertheless in which he has been a quick learner and proved to be rather good at adapting to.
“Of course you have to adapt a little bit to the way they play here in England, the physical side, it’s more physical obviously. Maybe more long balls from one goal to the other. Even with being 2-0 up, you know, the game is not finished,” he said.
“Maybe in Spain it’s a little bit different, even though football is football, with 2-0 you’re never sure anymore. Maybe here you know in minute 85 they can make it 2-1 and in the last minute you can almost ‘die’ that they will for sure try to get 2-2.
“Those are some things I needed to adapt to. I watched a lot of Premier League games, I knew a little bit what I would be going into and obviously, with training with the goalkeeping coach, you talk and you adapt on your own. I think I can adapt really well, like when I went from Belgium to Spain — it was the same and now to England — I had to adapt. It’s a process of course from game to game and it went well I think.”
Talk moves to comparisons and the similarities with Bayern Munich’s Manuel Neuer and how the German’s skills in tennis, handball and ice hockey helped.
“I did volleyball, tennis, basketball — ice hockey we don’t have in Belgium! Yes, tennis and volleyball were the two main things I did along with football.”
Articulate and expressive, we’ve been chatting for almost 20 minutes and by now Courtois is understandably struggling to settle his huge 6ft 7in frame in his chair.
Any talk of him as one of the best goalkeepers in the world is for others to say he reasons. Courtois admits to not only being an admirer of Iker Casillas and Edwin van der Sar, but also Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and his fellow Belgian and Chelsea teammate Eden Hazard.
Sone fine goalkeeping from Courtois has propelled the Blues to the EPL summit, but when I enquire about a single favourite save, it has Courtois wondering.
“It’s difficult, I think the one before the Burnley goal, when he shot and I saved and he got a corner and after the corner they scored. That save was a nice save. I think the one at Liverpool in the [League Cup] semi-final from [Liverpool’s Adam] Lallana was also nice. It depends maybe you can say a nice aesthetic save, but that save was really decisive to win a game or draw a game.”
Inevitably, Chelsea will face their critics. Champions League elimination and a home FA Cup loss to Bradford City were not on their radar, but Courtois is astute enough to see the bigger picture.
“When you play at Chelsea, Chelsea being Chelsea they expect that Chelsea is on top of the league or playing to be champions. That in the League Cup or the FA Cup, reaching almost the finals or winning it, and in the Champions League it’s the same thing.
“There are four trophies in one season and everybody expects that Chelsea will be in the four close to the final, and win one of the four or two of the four. And that’s what’s happening this season. So if you go out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals, it’s normal that there will be some critics. Everybody can accept that and we are doing our best to continue now in the league and be champions.
“I think it has a lot of ups and maybe a few downs, obviously being eliminated in the Champions League was not what we expected and I think in the FA cup we were out early. I think those weren’t good moments this season, but the rest is going well. We’re doing well, obviously some games we expected to win where we didn’t win.
“We’re playing very good football and obviously from this moment until the end of May, we can say something else. But hopefully we hopefully we can say that we won the title and we had a fantastic year. There are still finals to go and you have to approach it like that.”
— Tusdiq Din is a freelance sports writer based in the UK
