Jose Mourinho shared some sneaky football knowledge with John Terry during their time at Chelsea. Terry had two periods playing under Mourinho and together, they won three Premier League titles.
In Mourinho's second time at Chelsea, he revealed a lesser-known rule to Terry that could help their team. If Chelsea was winning 1-0 in a tight match, Mourinho would tell Terry and his teammate Gary Cahill to bump into each other and fall down.
Terry mentioned that a referee once didn't know the rule, which says that both players can't leave the field after a collision.
"Just to win. Didn’t care about anything else, he did anything to get an edge," Terry said on beIN Sports.
"I remember, the rule was, if we were 1-0 up and the ball got delivered into the box…if two defenders went up together and both went down on the floor after, you didn’t have to go off the field of play."
"So last 10 or 15 minutes, he would sit me and Gary Cahill down and go: ‘when the ball comes in the box, make sure you both go down - bump into each other and both go down because you can’t both go off."
"We’d never heard of that rule ever. So ball comes over in the last 10 minutes, head it away, Gaz goes down and I think ‘I better go down’. So I dropped to the floor and the ref said ‘you two off the pitch’. I said ‘no that’s not the rule, ask the linesman."
"Mourinho was so far ahead with those little bits and you’re talking small margins and the best managers find those little margins. Incredible."
Many people have criticized Mourinho for how he manages teams, saying he often uses defensive tactics and "parks the bus." But Terry disagrees with that. He says Mourinho actually liked his team to score lots of goals, not just focus on defence.
