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For Chelsea, the 2012 Champions League triumph remains among the most memorable days in the club’s history.
With interim manager Roberto Di Matteo at the helm, the Blues overturned an aggregate defeat against Napoli, saw off Benfica, survived a two-legged semi-final against Barcelona and dispatched of Bayern Munich on their own turf in the final to win the unlikeliest of trophies.
“We won it against all the odds, said Di Matteo, speaking on BT Sport podcast James Richardson’s Kings of Europe. “We had a feeling things were going our way, but we thoroughly worked hard for it as well. You don’t get luck by sitting at home on your sofa, you need to work to have that bit of luck.”
Few could have forecasted the win for Chelsea just months after they had sacked manager Andre Villas-Boas. The decision was made to stick with Di Matteo in a caretaker role to steady the ship until the end of the season, when Chelsea were planning to pick themselves up and start again.
But for Di Matteo, it represented a unique opportunity with very little pressure.
“I was excited,” he admitted. “I really didn’t have much to lose. I was a caretaker manager, the worst case scenario is they send you home. I just tried to make the best out of the situation.”
First up for Di Matteo was navigating the second leg of the last 16. Chelsea had fallen 3-1 to Napoli in the first leg under Villas-Boas and were facing an uphill battle for which the Italian always remained positive.
Asked if he truly believed Chelsea could win, Di Matteo insisted: “Of course! This is football, it’s unpredictable. Why wouldn’t we think we could turn over the result against Napoli? We scored an away goal as well, so really, we only needed to win 2-0. Of course we believed we could go through to the next round. We did it the hard way, but we did it!”
Benfica fell in the quarter-final, earning Chelsea a two-legged semi-final against Pep Guardiola’s mighty Barcelona side. A shock 1-0 win at Stamford Bridge set up a fascinating return leg, in which Chelsea had to cling on for their lives at times against the team who were many fans’ picks to win the competition.
“I closed by eyes and hoped for the best!” recalled Di Matteo when asked how he made it through the second leg.
“We focused on their weaknesses. Every team has weaknesses. As great as the team was, they had weaknesses as well and one of them was [Dani] Alves as a right-back was pushing forward very often and leaving space at the back. That’s how we scored the first goal at Stamford Bridge.
“Going to the second leg, we were defending well and that’s all you could do against Barcelona. You prepare the team, you know you’re not going to have much of the ball, it’s going to be a lot of work, right to left and forwards to backwards. That’s how it is against Barcelona.
“When JT [John Terry] got sent off I thought for one second that we could be in trouble. But then I put Ramires from the left wing to right-back, [Jose] Bosingwa into centre-half and just tried to get to half-time.
“They scored the second goal just before half-time, but the crucial moment, and they must have relaxed a little bit as, a minute or two after that, we scored that vital away goal, the beautiful goal from Ramires.”
With Terry and Raul Meireles suspended and both Gary Cahill and David Luiz major injury risks, Di Matteo’s hands were tied heading into the final against Bayern, with very limited options when it came to team selection.
And yet, few could believe their eyes when academy left-back Ryan Bertrand was handed his competition debut in the final, lining up as a winger ahead of Ashley Cole.
“You should have seen his face!” Di Matteo revealed of Bertrand’s reaction to the news. “He was in shock. I think he was happy.
“It was just the best team balance we could come up with. He had a good understanding with Ashley Cole so they could interchange positions. Ashley liked to go forward so we had Ryan to cover him, and Ryan could do the same.
“Over the week, I tried two or three players in that position but they didn’t feel right. Ryan fitted in quite naturally. It wasn’t a risk. Everybody said it was a gamble but, as a manager, you don’t look at it as a gamble because it made a lot of sense.”
To help alleviate the nerves heading into the final, Di Matteo and his team created a video for his players of interviews with all their loved ones, bringing the group together with messages of support from back home.
“It took weeks to prepare,” said the Italian. “The day before the game, in the evening, I think they were expecting a tactical meeting but we produced this video because we felt it was important the players understood their loved ones had belief in them as well.
“It took a lot of tension out of the players. I remember how tense they were when they came into the meeting, but when they left, some cried. Some had their mothers on the video, their kids, their wives and so on. I remember leaving the room and how the players were so much more relaxed.”
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Chelsea had to work hard defensively once again but saw their back line breached by a late Thomas Muller header that most in the stadium expected to decide the game.
Di Matteo admits to relying on the players to will their way back into the match.
“As a manager, you can only influence the game so much,” he explained. “You do all your preparations before. Once the game has started, there are little adjustments you can make but there isn’t too much you can do. We had seven minutes to get an equaliser, and Didier Drogba came up with it.
“We felt that, if it got to penalties, we would win. The general feeling was that, if we are going to go to penalties, we’d have a really good chance. The team felt that as well. That’s how we played in extra-time, trying to get there.”
Juan Mata missed Chelsea’s opening penalty but some heroics from goalkeeper Petr Cech left Drogba with the chance to win the game from the spot, and Di Matteo remembered his confidence watching the striker step up to seal the most famous of victories for Chelsea.
“There’s no way he’s going to miss,” Di Matteo said. “In reality, we all thought he was going to score, he’s going to write history.
“It was a beautiful ending.”
Listen to the Roberto Di Matteo interview in full in the latest episode of ‘James Richardson’s Kings of Europe’ – the latest podcast from BT Sport Pods out today across major podcast platforms. Every Monday, journalist James Richardson interviews a Champions League winner from the past 30 years, providing unique insights into some of the biggest moments in European football history: btsport.com/pods
