Ex Chelsea midfielder, John Obi Mikel has come out to talk about how he got punished by former Chelsea manager Antonio Conte for deciding to represent Nigeria at the 2016 Olympics.
Mikel recently revealed that he was shocked to see how a manager who just got appointed would ask him to choose between his club and country.
According to him, even when Chelsea respected his decision to leave for the Super Eagles after all the service he had rendered for the club, Conte still punished him for it.
Obi added that when he returned from the national break, Antonio had frozen him out of the team, and he was never in the squad list on matchdays again.
His words, “This guy who has just walked in the door for five minutes is telling me I had to choose. He was saying, ‘If you do that, you won’t be a part of this team’,”
“I spoke to the club and told them that I wanted to go. The club respected me because of what I had done for them and how long I’d been there.”
“So off I went and I felt punished for that. I came back and I didn’t make the squad. I was never in the squad list on matchdays again.”
“The funny thing is, just before the January window was going to start, he came up to me and said ‘I want a meeting with you’”
“This was after making me train on my own for months, treating a player who had been at Chelsea for a long time like this!”
“When he tried to meet with me he was like, ‘Let’s try and make up, I will need you in the team, let’s squash this, blah, blah, blah!’.”
“I was like, ‘Are you joking?! Are you f****** serious?!’ He knew I wanted out. I stood up and walked out of the room. You can’t disrespect a human being like that.”
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