When Rafa Benitez served as interim Chelsea manager, Chelsea legend John Terry was relegated from his usual starting role, as the Chelsea skipper was out of favour under the Spaniard.
After Benitez’s tenure, Chelsea re-signed Jose Mourinho as Chelsea manager and Terry was immediately reinstated by the Portuguese, and in the 2013/2014 season, Chelsea won the Premier League with Terry playing every single minute of the campaign.
Terry told the Chelsea magazine: “That mattered to me because when I wasn’t playing, under Rafa, people were kind of writing me off and saying: ‘That’s the end of his Chelsea career.’ It was something that really got to me actually, because I knew I wasn’t finished, not by a long way. I was just completely out of favour with the manager.
“So it was a massive statement for me to play every single minute of every single game two years later and at the time I was only the second person to do that for a title-winning team, after Gary Pallister.
“Throughout the year, with the medical staff, you manage to get through games, but I look back at that achievement now and feel it was huge.”