After making his debut in the English Premier League, EPL, goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has advised former Chelsea number one goalie, Petr Cech to remain at the club.
Courtois, who returned to the west London club after a three-year loan at Atletico Madrid, started in Chelsea’s 3-1 win at Burnley on Monday, 18 August, 2014.
Courtois, left and Cech
Contrary to speculation that 32-year old Cech, who joined Chelsea 10 years ago, may seek to leave Stamford Bridge, the 22-year old Belgian has advised Cech to remain at the Blues for him to benefit from the Czech international’s experience.
“I want him to stay. Even if he doesn’t play, he can be a lot of help to me in training,” Courtois said, in comments published by several British media outlets on Wednesday.
“I can still learn from him because he has a lot of experience. He can give me good tips about the Premier League, things I might not know at the start.
“He is nice to me. We are training very well and he is still proving he is a great goalkeeper.
“For the team it is better for us to have two good goalkeepers. I don’t have a problem if he stays. Hopefully I can play well and stay in the team.”
Few days ago, coach Jose Mourinho declared that he wants Cech to stay and fight for his place at Chelsea.
Cech remains in the dark over his immediate future at Chelsea as he confronts life as a second-choice at the London club.
Cech’s form has hardly wavered over recent years and he was one of the team’s most consistent performers last term. Yet he has been left surprised and confused by Mourinho’s decision to favour the Belgian and disappointed that the manager has not explained his reasoning face to face.
The experienced goalie, who has two years to run on his current contract and is one of the most senior players at the club, has said he will not make a hasty decision on his future on the back of one game of the league season. But that he has little desire to spend the campaign as an understudy and is conscious that the transfer deadline is looming large.
Mourinho suggested in the wake of the win at Burnley that Courtois’s promotion was not irrevocable and would be reviewed on a game-by-game basis.
The club’s stance is complicated by the reality that they have one too many foreign players in their 25-man first-team squad over the age of 21 to conform to Premier League and Champions League rules, so one is expected to leave before the end of the month.
Mourinho claimed after the Burnley game that he doesn’t want Cech to leave, quoted by The Independent as saying: “I want to keep Petr and, hopefully, he will stay at Chelsea. No player is happy when he is not playing every game and sometimes they are not happy when they are not playing for 10 minutes. Sometimes you give them a rest and they are not happy.
I have known Petr for 10 years. He will not sit back and relax, he will be exactly the opposite. I expect him to go into the training ground on Wednesday and be a top professional.”
In the past 24-hours, it has been rumoured that Cech could be headed to Roma, Liverpool and Monaco. Therefore, the prospect of Cech leaving Chelsea in the next two weeks must be considered realistic.
The good news for Cech is that he hasn’t lost his place necessarily through poor play of his own, and there is little shame in being replaced by a keeper of Courtois‘s quality, so his reputation is still strong and his cache is still high. Therefore, he has options that only time would tell which one he would choose.
Čech previously played for Chmel Blšany, Sparta Prague, and Rennes. He is the second most capped player in the history of the Czech national team with 107 caps, and represented the country at the 2006 World Cup, as well as the 2004, 2008 and 2012 European Championships.
He was voted into the Euro 2004 all-star team after helping the Czechs reach the semi-finals. Čech also received the individual award of Best Goalkeeper in the 2004–05, 2006–07 and 2007–08 seasons of the UEFA Champi
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