Chelsea legend Claude Makelele has revealed that John Terry forced a “last-minute change” to the 2008 Champions League final penalty order.
When you thought you could not like Terry any less, this revelation about the 2008 Champions League final dampens your opinion of the former Chelsea captain even more…
The worst moment of Terry’s career arguably came in Moscow as he cost Chelsea in their penalty shootout against Manchester United in the 2008 Champions League final.
After nine penalties, the score was 4-4 and Terry had the chance to win it with Chelsea’s fifth kick after Cristiano Ronaldo’s earlier failed attempt, but he embarrassingly spurned his opportunity and shot wide via an embarrassing slip.
Chelsea were eventually beaten 6-5 on sudden death as Nicolas Anelka had his penalty saved by Edwin van der Sar.
Now, Makelele claims Terry altered Chelsea’s penalty order “at the last-minute”, as the fifth penalty was originally meant to be taken by Salomon Kalou, who netted his side’s sixth spot-kick.
“The dressing room after the game was like fire. There was no happiness whatsoever – it was a sad place to be,” Makelele said on The LineUp podcast.
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“We made a big mistake ahead of the penalties. We had an order which was agreed with the players and the manager, but it changed at the last minute.
“It was supposed to be Salomon Kalou taking the last penalty but John [Terry] took the opportunity off him. I think we lost this competition because football is very harsh sometimes and, if you don’t do things the right way, you get punished.
“I was very angry when he missed the penalty because it was a chance that I knew a lot of the young players wouldn’t get. I’d won the Champions League before but, in this moment, John had to be the leader and do what was best for the team.
“He didn’t make sure we won the trophy, he tried to be a hero. If he knew this, he would have been a hero because he would have lifted the trophy.”
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Reflecting on this evening, Terry admitted last year that he would “never get over it”.
“I’m still not over it today. I don’t think I ever will be. It’s interesting because as a player you have so many highs, but it’s the lows that stay with you longer,” Terry admitted.
“That night we lost we went back to the hotel and the manager was asking us all to go down for a drink, but I stayed in my room because I couldn’t face the lads. Eventually I went down and had a beer with the rest of the group.
“I just remember standing in my hotel room on the 25th floor, looking over Moscow and asking myself, ‘why then, why did it start raining then, why did I slip?
“The hardest thing for me was that three days later we had a friendly for England against USA at Wembley and we drew 1-1, I scored a header from outside of the box. If I could swap any two goals in my career it’d be those two.”
