It was a Christmas Ben Chilwell will certainly never forget. Sidelined with a partial rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during Chelsea’s Champions League victory against Juventus a month earlier, the left-back was close to making his return to action when disaster struck.
“The plan was for me to watch the boys on Boxing Day and train with the group that didn’t play on the 27th,” Chilwell remembers at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground. “But Christmas Day I was doing a session on that pitch [he points over his shoulder] and just felt it go again. I planted my foot in a rehab session on the grass and my knee buckled again. It wasn’t as painful but it was the same feeling I had against Juventus and I knew: ‘I can’t go through my career going through this every month.’”
