Former Chelsea star Antonio Rudiger has revealed that “he really wanted to leave Chelsea” after being exiled from the first team by Frank Lampard.
Rudiger joined Chelsea from AS Roma in 2017 and spent five years at the London club before joining Spanish giants Real Madrid on a free transfer in the summer of 2022.
For the vast duration of his time at Chelsea the German international was a rock at the heart of Chelsea’s defence winning the Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup, Club World Cup and Uefa Super Cup.
However, towards the end of Lampard’s first spell in charge Rudiger found himself virtually frozen out having barely featured in the first half of the 2020/2021 campaign.
The former Chelsea man has opened up on his time playing under the clubs record goalscorer and told Goal: “To be honest, I still can’t say exactly what happened back then. That’s part of football.”
“Maybe he had other ideas or saw other players better. But the good thing about football is that the answer is on the pitch and I think I gave the perfect one.”
Ironically Rudiger claimed that we really wanted to leave to play under Thomas Tuchel at Paris Saint Germain in January 2021 but that move never materialised, however, Tuchel ended up replacing Lampard at Chelsea the following month.
He said: “I really wanted to leave. I wanted to leave. I wanted to join Thomas Tuchel at Paris Saint Germain, that was my wish, but it didn’t happen and six months later Tuchel came from PSG to Chelsea.”
“We then won the Champions League together. It was probably meant to be.”
