I pondered long and hard whether to post here or over on my work log. The events take place during office hours, on business but the subject is very close to my heart as a football fan. Usually my attendance at training events is planned weeks, if not months advance, but I was asked by my manager to floor walk on Monday (via MSN) and quickly agreed. I had little argument. The location was a stone throw away from my house. Little did I know how events would unfold over the course of the afternoon. At lunchtime we left our conference room suite and headed to the restaurant. Rumours were around that Chelsea had hijacked one of our rooms. Hotel staff had been searching for the main training organiser with some important news. It was true, the football players wanted to use our suite for fifteen minutes to talk tactics. We returned after lunch waiting outside our room, only for me to look through the keyhole and see the room empty. Disappointed I had missed the multimillionaire playboys, we asked the desk person to provide us with a key, opening the room and about to begin setup again, only for us to be told Chelsea had not used the room yet and to be thrown out again. As I walked out of the room, I noticed the noise from around the corner, with many of the females in the audience wearing big grins. As I turned to my left, I saw the blue and white. Mr. José Mourinho was there, at the front, leading his team. However he stopped dead in his tracks waiting for some of my colleagues to clear the room. He looked moody, upset and perhaps even angry. You did not really want to get in his way. While we waited for the team talk to end and for us to be readmitted to our room, we had to put up with a rather stout security guard at the tour, smiling contently to himself, sending and receiving text messages while occasionally peaking through the keyhole himself. I headed out into the car park with a colleague. We were going to grab a camera from the car. Typical, the batter had died on the CyberShotU and it was not a conventional battery, were we could go and buy replacements from a local supermarket. We had to do with two Nokia mobile phones, my personal 6230 and the updated version, the 6230i (with 1.3 Megapixel camera). However there was a problem, my colleagues personal mobile ran out of memory space, so I had to make do with just a poor quality video on my phone of the Special One leaving the room. I have uploaded the video to YouTube but the limitations of a camera phone are there for all to see.

Therefore I opted to upload some of the images I captured of the various superstars leaving the room. I did not take any pictures as they entered as I was rather startled and taken aback by their sudden appearance from around the corner. It is not every day of the week, you get to see a Championship Manager style of players walk past you. Team talks have moved on since back in the day, instead of a blackboard and chalk, Chelsea have a IBM Thinkpad. I would think the Portuguese manger, would have little use for such primitative technology, when surely he can use telepathy and clearly tell each player where he wants them to play and what he wants them to do. Much like a recent commercial for a famous debit card. The lesson from the day is quite clear, always keep a digital camera with fully charged batteries close at hand. I have made a mental note and will carry one in my laptop case on all of my travels. For you never know when you might have a Premiership team hijack your training, with thousands of pounds of laptops lying around. The funniest moment was getting back into the room, having to re-arrange for the training to recommence and all the ladies fighting over the seat in which John Terry and Frank Lampard sat in. A guy from the back shouted at the top of his voice, “They’re only footballers!” True but a brush with such sporting celebrity is something worth noting. Even if the rubles can push out to flowers to the organisers as a way of apology. No apology needed, you just made my day.