Could Willian be set for a reunion with Jose Mourinho at Tottenham?
https://theathletic.com/1622610/2020/02/21/willian-chelsea-tottenham-mourinho/?source=shared-article
Back in December, Willian played arguably the finest match of his Chelsea career against the team that has defined his Stamford Bridge legacy from the moment he arrived.
Two goals – the first a sublime curler into the far corner, the second a cool penalty – punctuated a performance of surging dribbles and unerring passes that inspired a deserved win over Tottenham Hotspur on Chelsea’s first visit to their bitter rivals’ shiny new stadium. For a short while, it also seemed to have tilted the Premier League top-four race in Frank Lampard’s favour.
Barely two months on, Tottenham visit Stamford Bridge on Saturday knowing victory will take them above their hosts into fourth.
Chelsea, badly lacking in goals and creation, could really use another match-winning display from the man who inherited Eden Hazard’s No 10 shirt last summer. Willian, however, has even greater personal stakes.
Talks over an extension to his contract, set to expire this summer, have reached an impasse — not over wages, but length. Sources have told The Athletic that Willian is holding out for a three-year deal, while Chelsea have so far refused to go beyond the two-year extension they gave to David Luiz last May, three months before selling him to Arsenal.
It’s easy to understand Chelsea’s logic. Luiz’s extension represented a departure from their long-standing policy of only offering one-year deals to players over the age of 30. Acquiescing to Willian’s request would mean shattering it entirely, as well as committing significant money to a winger renowned for his speed and stamina until the brink of his 35th birthday.
Willian’s argument, according to those close to him, is that he is sure he is capable of playing at a high level for at least another three years. The 31-year-old keeps himself in excellent physical condition, lives professionally off the field and has avoided serious injury. This season he has featured in 25 of Chelsea’s 26 Premier League matches, starting 20 times.
Complicating the situation is that regardless of whether or not they secure Champions League qualification this season, Chelsea are in the midst of a rebuild. Hakim Ziyech has been acquired in a deal that could rise to €44 million to supplement Christian Pulisic and Callum Hudson-Odoi among next season’s wing options, while Jadon Sancho will remain of interest until his Borussia Dortmund future is definitively settled this summer.
Willian’s long-term fit is in question, even if his immediate importance is not. Lampard has repeatedly praised the Brazilian this season, most notably hailing him Chelsea’s best player during a seven-game winning streak in autumn that now feels like a long time ago.
Asked if Chelsea should consider it a “no-brainer” to give Willian a contract extension shortly after that Tottenham masterclass in December, Lampard said: “The word isn’t ‘no-brainer’ because I can’t get involved in the money. That’s up to the club to do. But everyone sees how much I’m relying on him, and picking him and in what he is producing, I love him at this football club. So there’s my answer.”
The respect is mutual. “It was a privilege to play with him — you all know how great a player he was — and as a coach I feel that he likes me a lot,” Willian wrote of Lampard in a piece for The Players’ Tribune this week. “I like him a lot, too. I really enjoy the way he is doing things. He cares about his players. His man-management is excellent.”
But while Willian’s effort has remained consistent, his impact has tailed off in recent weeks. He is yet to register a goal or an assist in 2020, becoming engulfed by the broader issues that are threatening to derail Lampard’s hopes of delivering a top-four finish. Producing for Chelsea on the pitch remains his best hope of getting what he wants from the club at the negotiating table, and there could be no more powerful reminder of his enduring quality than a return to form against Spurs.
The manner of his arrival in 2013 ensured Willian was celebrated as a Chelsea legend before he’d even kicked a ball for the club.
Tottenham’s fury at having a player seen as a marquee summer signing pinched by their bitterest rivals after flying him to London for a medical was documented at the time, and the man himself recalled the extraordinary drama of his late U-turn in an interview two years ago.
“You know my objective was to go to Chelsea [from Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala], but since Chelsea didn’t want me, then we were going to Tottenham,” Willian told Brazilian TV show Resenha. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to sign with Tottenham, anyway, there’s no other option.’
“Then we’re going in the van, on the way, get to the training centre. Kia [Joorabchian] my agent, is already down there, waiting. I thought it was weird, he was already at the door. Then I got out of the van and he said, ‘We have problems.’ I said, ‘Oh, what happened?’ Then he said, ‘Chelsea made an offer.’ I said, ‘So make do, I’ll get back in the van. You make do and I’ll go to Chelsea, I will not sign with Tottenham.’
“I stayed there for eight hours in the training centre. Tottenham’s director said, ‘I’m going to report you to FIFA, this and that, fans here in England will boo you, this and that.’ They made up a lot of things. I got stuck there for eight hours. Then I left and I went straight to meet the Chelsea people to sort the details and sign.”
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy had been hijacked by a personal call from Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to Anzhi’s owner Suleiman Kerimov. Willian, a devout Christian, interpreted it as divine intervention.
“Many clubs wanted me, but I wanted to go to Chelsea,” he wrote in a piece for The Players’ Tribune this week. “And in the end, thank God, I was able to fulfil my dream. I can still remember visiting the club, seeing the facilities, meeting David Luiz in the dressing room. I was so happy. God seems to have heard what I wanted and said, ‘This is where he will go.'”
In comments that now carry an added sense of irony, then-Chelsea and now-Tottenham manager Jose Mourinho took the most public delight in Spurs’ humiliation. “That’s the danger of medicals before contracts but, at the same time, if the contract and [then] the medical after sometimes you can have a problem before signing a player so you have to do the medical before,” he said smugly.
“The best thing you can do is do the medical in secret. The player is fine, you can sign him. The player is not fine, you don’t destroy his career by saying the player has problems. So you do it in secret and after that sign the contract with the club and the player. Sometimes you don’t make it. Sometimes you guys have great sources, find everything, but that’s the risk.”
Asked if Chelsea expected to complete the signing without complications, a grinning Mourinho then replied mischievously: “We have to do a medical.”
The moment was quickly immortalised in song at Stamford Bridge — one that has since become the only universally popular thing about Willian among Chelsea supporters:
The shite from Spurs,
They bought his flight,
But Will-i-an,
He saw the light,
He got the call from Abramovich,
And off he went to Stamford Bridge,
And he hates Tottenham, he hates Tottenham,
He hates Tottenham and he hates Tottenham…
Yet an added element to Saturday’s lunchtime derby is that, should Chelsea and Willian fail to find an agreement on a new contract before July 1, there are reasons to believe that Tottenham should be considered his most logical suitors.
Mourinho was a huge Willian fan in 2013 and he remains one. He did his best to convince Manchester United to move for the Brazilian during his time at Old Trafford, and the pair still exchange warm messages regularly.
“We had a special relationship,” Willian said of his time working with Mourinho. “He demanded a lot, so there were some conflicts, but that’s normal. He would challenge me and call out my mistakes, but if I had played well he would also say something like, ‘Today, you killed it.’ I loved his man-management, how he organised training, how he spoke in meetings. I learned a lot from him. Even after he left Chelsea, he spoke well of me. We are still friends.”
Willian is very settled in London. He recently acquired British citizenship and is happy living with his wife and two young daughters in Knightsbridge, west London. He is close to Babbo, the Italian restaurant in nearby Mayfair that he co-owns with Luiz, and also Hillsong Church, which they attend together.
“If you ask my wife if she wants to leave London, she’ll say no,” he added. “My daughters feel the same way. Of course, Brazil is Brazil, right? It’s our home, our culture. We always feel good when we go there on holiday and see family and friends. But London is my second home.
“So London is where I want to stay. This is where I have my family, my church. I want my daughters to grow up here.”
Moving to Spurs would certainly be the most peculiar postscript possible to Willian’s Chelsea career, and the biggest obstacle to it happening might be Mourinho convincing Levy to employ a player who so publicly and painfully burned him.
Willian, those close to him insist, has always wanted to stay at Chelsea. He has had interest from other clubs in past transfer windows and has been free to negotiate a pre-contract agreement with interested clubs since January 1. He has not sought to do so. His ideal scenario remains a new contract at Stamford Bridge.
But with that outcome no closer to becoming reality, Willian is facing the possibility that these will be his final three months as a Chelsea player.
It is a standoff that adds another layer of intrigue to Saturday’s match, when thousands at Stamford Bridge will he hoping he torments Tottenham again.
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