Chelsea: When Lampard and Drogba burned Marko Marin while discussing De Bruyne

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·3 March 2022

Chelsea: When Lampard and Drogba burned Marko Marin while discussing De Bruyne

It will always be a mystery why a player of Kevin De Bruyne’s extraordinary talents was never given more of an opportunity to shine at Chelsea.

De Bruyne signed for the Blues from Genk in 2012 before moving to Werder Bremen on loan for the 2012-13 campaign.

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The Belgium international impressed in the Bundesliga that season before returning to Chelsea ready to make an impact under the returning Jose Mourinho.

However, De Bruyne ended up making just nine appearances for the Blues that season and failed to score a single goal. Only three of those appearances came in the Premier League.

The midfielder was subsequently sold to Wolfsburg, where his sensational performances eventually led to a £55 million move to Manchester City in 2015.

De Bruyne is now widely regarded as one of the best midfielders of his generation and is undoubtedly an all-time Premier League great.

So, what on earth went wrong for him at Stamford Bridge?

One of his former Chelsea teammates, Frank Lampard, was asked this question by Gary Lineker after the Belgian starred in a 5-2 win over Tunisia at the 2018 World Cup finals.

In the process, however, Lampard and Didier Drogba ended up going viral on social media for a rather harsh burn about Marko Marin.

Marin, once nicknamed ‘the German Messi’, joined Chelsea from Werder Bremen in 2012, but only made 16 appearances for the club before he was loaned to Sevilla, Fiorentina, Anderlecht and Trabzonspor.

The former Germany international was eventually offloaded to Olympiacos on a permanent deal in 2016.

Asked how Chelsea missed the talent of De Bruyne, Lampard responded: “I don’t think they missed it. We were there at the time and the talent was there. Technically, you could see everything he had.

“The problem he had was that Chelsea had an embarrassment of riches. They had [Eden] Hazard, Oscar, [Juan] Mata, [Andre] Schurrle…”

Drogba then interrupted and said: “Marko Marin…”

Lampard said: “They had all these players…” before stopping.

Amused, he turned to Drogba and said: “You mentioned Marko Marin.”

Poor old Marko.

Jose Mourinho: Why Chelsea sold Kevin De Bruyne

Despite being the Chelsea manager responsible for selling De Bruyne, Mourinho insists he had no option.

Speaking to talkSPORT in 2021, the Portuguese coach said: “He impressed me so much I made the decision I don’t want this kid to go on loan, I want him to stay, and in our first match of the Premier League season he started against Hull City.

“In the second match we got to Old Trafford and after this he come to me and said, ‘I want to play every match, I want to play every minute’. He put a lot of pressure on that.

“He wanted to leave, he wanted to go to Germany where he was previously on loan and so happy, and his decision was to go. He put big pressure on that and it worked very well for him. The story is there and the quality of the player is absolute, he is top five in the world.”

Mourinho added: “He knew very well what he wanted and he was not ready to have that season at Chelsea where a lot of good players were in the same team, he didn’t have the patience.

“He was not ready for that, he was coming from a season in Germany where he was playing every minute of every match.

“Sometimes us coaches make mistakes, but that was not the case. I saw he had the potential to do it, but he just knew perfectly well what he wanted.”