John Terry reveals shock plane dispute made Andre Villas-Boas failure at Chelsea inevitable | OneFootball

John Terry has revealed how a stand-off over seats on a flight left Andre Villas-Boas doomed to failure before his Chelsea tenure had even begun.

Villas-Boas was installed at Stamford Bridge in 2011 and made several attempts to dilute the player power of Chelsea’s highly successful and influential dressing room.

The Portuguese coach lasted less than a year at the west London helm, with Roberto Di Matteo steering Chelsea to 2012 Champions League and FA Cup glory in a memorable interim stint.

Terry captained Chelsea to five Premier League titles in the club’s most successful era, but Villas-Boas was unable to make an impact with the Blues — even slipping up on a flight amid the 2011 pre-season tour to Asia.

And Terry explained how seating senior pros like himself, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba in economy, while youth team players enjoyed first-class treatment put Villas Boas on the backfoot from the word go.

John Terry refused to back down in the dispute and ultimately got his way

Chelsea FC via Getty Images

“We get on the plane and I'm sitting in economy on a 13-hour flight,' Terry told the podcast Up Front with Simon Jordan.

“And we've got Josh McEachran, Nathaniel Chalobah, a couple of other young players all in first class. And this was part of AVB going "no player is bigger than me, everyone's the same".

“It turns out Lamps is flying out in first class and I'm flying back in first class. So if you fly out in first, you come back in economy, but basically it wasn't good enough.

“So, I'm going on the plane ‘no, we're not going anywhere until these young players go back in economy and the first team players, that have built this club to where we are today, go back in first’.

“We're on the plane, people were up and down, AVB comes up ‘what's the problem?’ I go, ‘well, we're not going anywhere until the young players move’. And to be fair to the young players, they're going ‘this is really uncomfortable, we'll go back’. And I'm going ‘no, it's not your decision, he has to own it’.”

The 78-cap England defender Terry explained how the pressure he and other players heaped on Villas-Boas to reverse his decision proved a first impression from which the former Porto boss never recovered.

He came in and he failed instantly

John Terry

Villas-Boas arrived at Chelsea from Porto in June 2011 but was sacked in early March 2012.

Former midfielder Di Matteo then restored the Blues’ feel-good factor and previous senior player control to the dressing room, leading to the club’s breakthrough Champions League triumph, over Bayern in Munich itself.

“This is one of his first things in front of everyone,” Terry continued.

“In the end, it spun. First team players go first, younger players go economy. That's how it should be. These younger players are striving to be where we've got, and he tried to make a statement.

“He came in and he failed instantly, because I promise you the plane wasn't going. If it was going, it would have gone without myself, Frank and Didier.”