Andre Schurrle is still only 26 years of age but he’s already had a packed and interesting career. Coming through the ranks at Mainz, Schurrle moved to Bayer Leverkusen in 2011 for €8.5m.
Chelsea were soon interested and the German club attempted to hold Schurrle back. Whilst that succeeded for one window, Roman Abramovich’s negotiators didn’t give up and the footballer arrived at Stamford Bridge in 2013 for €22m.
Schurrle was a good, flexible, signing for Chelsea, but it was a club move rather than a manager one, with the long term negotiators getting to the closing stage before Jose Mourinho took over.
Still, Schurrle got games for Chelsea and had proven to be a good buy. The Stamford Bridge faithful were content with the German but things changed towards the end of 2014.
The former Chelsea player has been speaking to German magazine SportBild and when asked about working under Mourinho, he said: “He showed me the hard professional life. For the first time, I had to deal with it as it is, after just one bad game you’d suddenly be outside the team.
“It was really hard, but also a great experience with all these stars… It was just as I imagined it with this big club with the blue jerseys. Chelsea was a dream for me. But after I was out for a few weeks through an infection, the coach unfortunately did not count on me much more often.”
That led Schurrle from Chelsea to Wolfsburg in the 2015 winter transfer window for a fee of €32m. Abramovich and Chelsea made a profit on the deal, and then Schurrle moved on again to Borussia Dortmund.
