Felipão reveals beef and drama with Chelsea star: “Pus was coming out of his knee”

“It was amazing [trabalhar na China]. To this day, if you ask my wife, she will say that China is a wonderful place. Everyone thinks not, but it was. In China it was easy, the difficult part was interpreting because he spoke five languages ​​and I didn’t understand anything. The hardest place to work was England”, he revealed.

When talking more about the behind-the-scenes experience he experienced in charge of Chelsea in the 2008/09 season, Felipão recalled a relationship problem when he barred one of the English club’s stars.

“I don’t speak English perfectly. It was difficult to accept some things that existed in the department. I wanted to create a group, a family, I wanted to lead as I always led, with my heart. There was a certain player who had a very big knee problem. When the game was over, he had a puncture and a huge liquid of pus was removed. I said: ‘you won’t play with me anymore’ and I was one of the stars. I had problems”, declared Felipão.

Without confirming the star’s identity, Felipão said he met the athlete in 2018 and was recognized by his former teammate.

“It was only after 10 years that I got the reward. This person found me and said: ‘Oh, professor, when I was a player, I didn’t understand. Now I understand my knee and you’. I wanted to preserve it, he wanted to play, so I had very big problems with the management and everything. In England, it was the hardest I worked”, he reinforced.

Felipão had problems with three Chelsea stars; see which ones

The five-time world champion did not mention any names of athletes at the event in Curitiba. However, as the English press reported at the time, the Chelsea star with whom Felipão had a troubled relationship was striker Didier Drogba, an Ivorian and one of the greatest idols in the history of the Blues. An article published by ge.globo, in 2013, for example, mentions that British newspapers reported that Drogba I removed 60 ml of pus and blood from my knee every game.

The relationship deteriorated when Scolari did not allow Drogba to undergo treatment in Cannes, France, to treat his knee injury. This was allowed at Chelsea until the Brazilian arrived. To make matters worse, Felipão even made an agreement with the Portuguese José Mourinho, coach of Inter Milan at the time, to exchange Drogba for Adriano Imperador. Mourinho initially agreed, but the Brazilian center forward scored two goals in three games and made the Portuguese player give up.

Furthermore, Felipão still had problems with German Michael Ballacka star who lost his place in the team with the arrival of Deco in the squad. Another highlight was the French Nicolas Anelkawho was the top scorer of the ‘Felipão Era’ at Chelsea, with 14 goals, but did not take sides in the dressing room so as not to upset the other athletes and the wing opposing ‘Big Phil’.

To top it all off, Felipão also didn’t get along with Frenchman Christophe Lollichon, a goalkeeper coach hired by Chelsea in 2007, following a request from Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech. The coach was uncomfortable with the arrival of Carlos Pracidelli for the same role and only spoke French in the dressing room, which made communication with Scolari even more difficult.

According to the English press, the Brazilian coach even banned Lollichon from entering the dressing room and, according to the newspaper The Telegraphthe Frenchman asked the board for someone to lead the team in an “intelligent” way after Felipão’s departure.

Felipão explains how to act when working in other countries

At the IV South-Brazilian Congress of Sports Medicine, Felipão, Edilson Thiele and José Luiz Runco recalled career experiences.

In China, for example, Felipão took Edilson Thiele to work at Guangzhou Evergrande, which closed its doors in 2025 after bankruptcy. The team, which enjoyed its peak in the 2010s with the expansion of football in the Asian country, became seven times consecutive national champions.

For three seasons, the Brazilian duo had to adapt to Chinese culture. This, for Felipão, is the main secret for those who are going to work outside the country.

“He went to work with me at Guangzhou Evergrande and the doctors were ours, Brazilians, who we knew here. Chinese culture was what we had to accept for them to accept ours. We accepted theirs and introduced ours. We managed to recover our team. When we arrived, we had, of the 22 players, 13 in the medical department”, he recalls.

“We have to put ourselves in situations that sometimes we don’t want, but for that goal to be achieved, we have to make some effort. When we go to work somewhere, we have to accept the culture of that place. How can we join the group so that we can achieve the objectives. It’s very difficult. I, for example, worked in seven countries and had to accept some cultures. I worked in Saudi Arabia with the prince throwing a party, I was honored and had to eat the sheep’s tongue. Spectacular, I really liked it“, he said in an ironic tone, drawing laughter.

Edilson Thiele completed the story with Felipão’s ‘Brazilian way’ to please the Chinese, especially the then head of the medical department.

“We arrived in Guangzhou and we had three doctors with us. One was from the Chinese team, that is, he was the boss. He [Felipão] arrives and says: ‘He’s the one in charge from tomorrow onwards. Any problem you have, he will come and talk to me. And if he does something wrong, I’ll talk to him’, pointing at me. How am I going to convince the head of the Chinese team that I was going to be the boss, theoretically? Then there’s the Brazilian side. He got a signed Brazil shirt and captivated others. This is a bit of a review. As Felipão said, you have to be flexible enough to adapt and respect yourself”, added Thiele.