Chelsea Captain John Terry will be leaving Stamford Bridge at the end of the season, as he was not offered a new contract by the club. The defender joined Chelsea at the age of 14, where he has won four Premier League titles, the Champions League and five FA Cups.
When he found out about the decision made by the club, he was reduced to tears, as he it was so unexpected. All his teammates were shocked by the decision and Mourinho’s departure seems to be a big factor in this as well. He commented on the matter saying: “Ideally I would have loved to stay, but the club’s moving in a different direction. I couldn’t play for another Premier League club. It will be elsewhere for sure. I feel as though I’m in great nick, I’m playing great and I’ve got a couple of years to go. It’ll just be elsewhere.The club will move on. No player is ever bigger than the club. No doubt they’ll sign one or two great centre-backs.”
The current 2015/2016 season has been the first season that Terry was not playing in every match. He was benched on a few occasions by former manager Jose Mourinho. The drastic change started from when Terry was substituted at half-time during the Man City match, which they lost. The downfall of Chelsea, which left the current champions on the bottom half of the table, led to Mourinho being sacked and replaced by Guus Hiddink for the rest of the season. It has not been decided who the manager of Chelsea will be next season.
Terry mentioned:”They said that when the new manager comes in, things might change, it’s a no at the minute. I needed to know now like I have done every January and sometimes it takes a couple of months to get done. It’s not going to be a fairytale ending, I’m not going to retire at Chelsea, which it took me a couple of days to get over.”
Terry has played 696 times for the Blues, and will still continue to play, however it will not be with another Premier League club, as he wanted to retire at Chelsea, so it would not feel right to be anywhere else in the league. In light of this he has mentioned that he would consider playing for a European Club. Terry is currently the top scoring defender of the league with 40 goals. He has also played 477 league games for Chelsea, which ranks him 5th out of Ryan Giggs (1st – 632 games) , Jamie Carragher (2nd – 508 games), Steven Gerrard (3rd – 504 games) and Paul Scholes (4th – 499 games), who have managed more than him for a single club.