“When I wore that Manchester United shirt, I sat there thinking ‘What have you done?’ It was a massive mistake” John Obi Mikel opens up on his transfer tug of war with Chelsea and the Red Devils
Two hours before I played for Nigeria at the Under-17 World Championship in Finland in 2003, our jerseys arrived. We had been waiting for our names to be printed on the back – when they came, we were all opening them up. I saw mine, and it said Mikel. I was like ‘What?! What’s this?’ It was supposed to say Michael, which was my name. They said it was a mistake. I asked if they could change it, but they said: “No, we don’t have time, we have a game to go and play – sorry, you’ll have to wear it.” I wore it and had a great tournament, so I thought, ‘OK, I’ll keep it!’ And that’s been my name ever since.
I was 16 years old, and that Under-17s tournament was my showcase, my time to announce myself to the world. Because I had an amazing tournament, the whispers started. Everybody started to know about this wonderkid called Mikel – all the agents and all the clubs started looking for me.
One agent showed up inside our team hotel and was asking everyone: “Where is this kid?” The Nigerian FA had already told the security at the hotel: “If anyone asks where he is, tell them that you don’t know, don’t tell them his room number.” This agent had a briefcase full of cash sitting right next to him, about £50,000, saying: “Listen, I think a big Dutch club want you to go there, so sign for them and sign for me.” I was only 16, and all of these crazy things had already started happening.
During that period, I was an attacking midfield player, a creative player, rather than the defensive midfielder I later became. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I knew I was really good and that I’d eventually sign for one of the big teams. Arsenal, Bayern Munich – a lot of teams were after me.
Very soon, I was invited to Manchester United. I met Sir Alex Ferguson, and stayed there and trained for a month or two. I’d always train with the first team, never with the academy, which is what I should have been doing, but I was too good! I trained with Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Diego Forlan, Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand. Sometimes, I just watched them and the way they trained – just unbelievable. Paul Scholes would ping the ball right, left and centre – he was absolute quality. I could have watched him all day. What a player. When I trained with them, Sir Alex would always put me in the same team as Roy Keane, so I had somebody to protect me! As you know, Paul Scholes was the worst tackler; he’d come in and ‘Boom!’. Then Keano would go in and give him one to protect me! It was fun. I enjoyed my time there.
What happened next is a long story. Back then, you had to be 18 to sign from Africa. I was 16, so Manchester United thought, ‘OK, we will send you home for two or three months, then you can come back and train with the team for another two months’. They would do that until they found a proper solution. They sent me back to Nigeria, but then when I was at home, Chelsea found out where I was. They sent an agent, who came with a contract and convinced me to go there instead. Roman Abramovich had bought the club – I thought about it and was like ‘OK, a new history is about to be made at Chelsea’, so I went for trials there. Straight away, Claudio Ranieri wanted me to sign, but again, I couldn’t because I wasn’t 18.
Instead of sending me back home, though, like Manchester United did, Chelsea arranged for me to go to Norway for a while and play for Lyn Oslo. I had an apartment there and Chelsea were looking after me, my family and my friends.
I had three Nigerian team-mates with me – Chelsea sent them to Lyn with me to keep me company, so that I wasn’t homesick. They stayed in the same apartment as me. I think they knew what the situation was, which wasn’t good. They were really good players, but they quickly understood that Chelsea weren’t going to sign all of them – maybe they’d sign a couple and send them on loan.
They weren’t going to play for Chelsea, though – I was the guy they wanted. Chelsea wanted them to keep me company – they were guys I’d played with in Nigeria’s under 20s, we grew up together. I’m still friends with them, too. Chinedu Obasi played in Germany after that, but the other two, Emmanuel Sarki and Ezekiel Bala, didn’t really make it.
When I turned 18, I played a game for Lyn, Manchester United heard about it and sent their representative to Norway. They met me with a pre-contract, for about £1.5m or something. They came, bamboozled me into a room with the managers of Lyn, with none of my agents there, no representative, no phone call to any of my family, nothing. It was just me, a kid, sitting there and signing a contract. Looking back, that wasn’t right. There should be advice from somebody; it’s unusual for it to happen like that.
Everything was done on the same day, in about an hour, or an hour and a half. As soon as I signed the contract, a whole press conference had already been arranged to announce that I’d joined Manchester United.
When we’d finished training that day, I’d told my three Nigerian team-mates, the ones Chelsea had sent there to be with me: “You guys can go home without me.” I didn’t tell them what was happening. They were sitting at home, waiting for me to get home, then they turned on the TV and saw me in this press conference with a Manchester United shirt on! They tried to call me, but my phone wasn’t there; it had already been taken away from me. In some of the pictures, you can see from my face what I was thinking while I was wearing that Manchester United shirt in the press conference. I was sitting there thinking to myself, ‘What have you done?’
Straight away, I knew exactly what I’d done – I had made a massive mistake, although I didn’t know it was going to be as huge as it was and that it was going to take almost two years to get sorted. When Chelsea saw exactly what had happened, they were furious. They’d sent me to Norway, they were looking after me, they said: “No, we’re not letting you go.” They also sent their agent to Oslo, and it became a war.
I was taken to a hotel by Lyn and the people from Manchester United, so that nobody knew where I was, and so that Chelsea wouldn’t find out. But Chelsea and my agent found out where I was – in secret, my agent came and smuggled me on to the next flight in the morning. We went to London and Chelsea put me up in a nice apartment close to the stadium. I ended up staying there for about a year, as FIFA tried to get my situation resolved. They couldn’t. The English FA got involved, too.
It was very flattering that both clubs wanted me – knowing that two of the biggest clubs in the world were fighting over me only elevated my stature as a player. But by that point, I wanted to play football and it became frustrating. Every day I woke up and stared at the ceiling. I wasn’t able to go anywhere, I couldn’t even train, I couldn’t play for anybody, FIFA said I couldn’t go near any football club. Nobody was allowed to see me from any club; I was alone. It was a horrible situation – your parents calling you, and other family members, crying down the phone. They wanted to see me play, and I was crying every day because I wanted to play football; it’s what I loved doing. In a way, I missed one or two years of my career sitting there, but it was from my own stupid mistake by signing that contract with Manchester United in Norway. I knew I’d made a mistake.
Jose Mourinho was the Chelsea boss by then, and during that time, I met him, even though I wasn’t allowed to. There were a lot of clandestine moves that happened so I could meet him – I was taken in a car, which drove me about two or three kilometres and dropped me off, then another car picked me up, took me another two or three kilometres and so on, until I got to the secret location where I met Mourinho. We had a great conversation over lunch and he told me how much he really wanted me to join the club. I knew I had to play for Chelsea.
Roman Abramovich was like, ‘There’s no way I’m letting this kid go, I want him at the club’, and they fought tooth and nail to make sure I joined Chelsea, but Manchester United were still not letting go. Eventually, when things still weren’t resolved, Sir Alex Ferguson said: “OK, I’ll have a meeting with the kid – give me 20 or 30 minutes with him and I’ll get it sorted.” It was just him and me in a room. My agent was outside, and before I went in, he told me: “Look, he’s going to try, and this meeting determines what happens, so if you come out of there and you’ve said yes to him, that’s a yes – but whatever he says, just nod your head and say no.” That’s exactly what I did.
I was sitting at the end of this long table, like the tables they had during COVID for social distancing. Sir Alex was saying to me: “Listen, what is it that Chelsea are offering you? Is it the money? Tell me, I will give you more. Everyone at the club wants you, Roy Keane, Scholesy, they’re all asking after you, because they need you, we need you at the club, I’m going to make you the best player.”
I’d listened to what my agent had told me beforehand, and I didn’t say much. I just said: “No, boss. I’m sorry, I just want to go to Chelsea.” It was difficult to say no to the greatest manager of all time, to sit there and say no to his face. Only a few players have ever said no to Alex Ferguson. I think Luis Figo might have been another one. But I wanted to go to Chelsea. Manchester United had won everything already. I wanted to go somewhere that I could create history.
I could see Fergie getting redder and redder – I thought ‘I’m going to get a hairdryer from him’. But there was no hairdryer. After 30 or 40 minutes, he realised he couldn’t convince me and got up, took his briefcase and left. About a week later, Manchester United got in touch with Chelsea to say: “OK, we understand the kid has made his point clear, he doesn’t want to come to United any more, but you have to pay.” It was something like £12m to Manchester United and £4m to Lyn.
In 2006, I made my debut for Chelsea. It was amazing, it was huge for me, although things didn’t pan out the way I wanted at first. On my first Premier League start at Reading, I got sent off for two stupid yellow cards. Back then, I was young and naive. I made mistakes, I’d be late for meetings. I had to learn. Mourinho had to put me in my place very quickly, with lots of punishments, lots of fines. He sent me to the academy for a couple of weeks or a month, then brought me back when I was ready to know I was in the big boys’ league. This was Chelsea Football Club, I wasn’t in Nigeria or at Lyn Oslo any more. I had to learn the culture of the football club – the likes of John Terry, Didier Drogba and Mourinho would let you know exactly where you were.
At the end of that season, I played in the very first FA Cup final at the new Wembley. Against Manchester United.
I had an amazing game. I went up against people like Paul Scholes and absolutely bossed the game. That day was special, because I played a part in the winning goal – I flicked it to Didier Drogba, he flicked it to Frank Lampard, Lamps gave it back and then Didier did what he did best, which was to score in the big games and win us trophies.
I wouldn’t say I rubbed it in Fergie’s face that day, but it was nice to get one over him! I could see it in his face, looking at me, thinking, ‘How did I let him go?’
A year later, though, Manchester United defeated us in the Champions League final in Moscow. I was on the bench and I was so disappointed that I didn’t start or even come on. I was sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my god, that would have been my first Champions League trophy. If I’d gone to Manchester United, I would have been a Champions League winner right now’. I felt that if I’d played in that game, the outcome might have been a bit different.
But I used that disappointment to fuel me when we reached the final again in 2012, against Bayern Munich. During those years, I never gave up. As a team, we never gave up; we knew we could still win the Champions League. When we got to the final in 2012, that was the last chance for the likes of JT, Lamps, Petr Cech and Drogba. They were all going to leave the club soon, so it was our last chance to give them, and give Roman Abramovich, that trophy. It had become an obsession for us.
I remember the team meeting the night before that final. All of the players received a video from a family member with words of encouragement. Great credit to the club that they did that – to have gone around the world, looked for our family members and got them to record a video. It was just so special. Roberto Di Matteo did an amazing job. We came out of that meeting thinking, ‘There is no way we’re losing tomorrow’. That game was the biggest stage of my life – I thought ‘I don’t know when I’ll be playing in a Champions League final again’. It was my best game inChelsea colours – I had an amazing game. Up until Didier Drogba scored our equaliser, then later scored the winning penalty, I think I was going to win our man of the match. It was down to how much I wanted it, how much we all wanted it. We were the first London team to win the Champions League. In the end, I played 372 games for Chelsea, and my relationship with the fans is still special. I wasn’t the guy who set the world on fire in terms of creating chances and scoring goals because of the way my position was played back then. In those days, a holding midfielder didn’t go anywhere – he was always there, making sure he protected the back four. We couldn’t run past the halfway line – Mourinho would be on the touchline, saying: “Where are you going?!” Now you see Rodri and Ryan Gravenberch bombing forward – Rodri winning the Ballon d’Or showed how the position has evolved.
Last year, I bumped into Sir Alex at the Champions League final and we had a nice chat. I said hello to him and he said: “Oh, there he is, the one that got away!” He remembered everything, but said: “I’m not upset with you any more, it’s in the past.” I asked: “Have you forgiven me, boss?” He said yes, even though we know Fergie never forgives! I wanted to go to Chelsea to be part of history, and I was. We built our own dynasty, our own history. Back when I was a teenager, I had to make a decision between two huge clubs and it wasn’t an easy one. I chose Chelsea. I don’t have any regrets about it at all.
Mikel was speaking to FFT in association with streaming platform DAZN
