'Chelsea were interested' – Another player who could have joined Mourinho revolution on £20m transfer tussle

Micah Richards is now just an annoying Sky Sports pundit. But not long ago he was considered one of the big talents in English football.

After coming through the Man City academy he had his breakout season and shot to fame with a debut goal. Soon England were calling him up, and Chelsea (then the dominant team in the league) were circling.

On a recent episode of his podcast, he told the story of how he almost signed for Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea:

“Apparently [Mourinho] tried to sign me as well when I was at Man City. It was around the season of 2006/2007 I would say. I was playing for England and Man United were interested and Chelsea were interested and I was just basically [thinking] ‘I’ve got a chance to play for Mourinho.’

“You go to bed at night and think and you look at houses in London. There were enquiries made, it was all done by the book, agents speaking to agents.

“Man City were saying they wanted £20m for me at the time and I’d only played one season, it was a good season by the way… I wanted to stay at Man City but when I knew that he was potentially interested in me, it was a nice feeling.”

Those were the days when Roman Abramovich was really splashing the cash, and there was nobody in Europe who could really compete with us on that front. We’re sure there are countless stories like this of talents who came close to joining Mourinho’s elite team, but never quite made it, for one reason or another.

Compared to Ronaldinho or Andrea Pirlo, Richards wasn’t such a great loss in the end.