Kanté’s hunch

N’Golo Kanté is one of the footballers most admired both for his quality on the green and for his affable personality that has little to do with his work as a defensive midfielder.

The always cheerful Frenchman had a hunch in the Chelsea dressing room that his teammate Edouard Mendy fondly remembered in an interview on Bein Sports France. According to the goalkeeper, Kanté was convinced that Chelsea would win the last edition of the Champions League before playing the first match of the group stage in which they drew 0-0 against Sevilla at Stamford Bridge.

“I think I have the best anecdote of the season. We are on the move with N’Golo, Kurt (Zouma) and Olivier (Giroud). N’Golo, confident, said “guys I think this year we will win the Champions League. Yes, I don’t know, I have a feeling”. The first day. I told him to wait and see how the game went tonight. That night Sevilla played and honestly, it was the most difficult game we had in the group stage. They came to our field and pushed us like crazy, they had the ball 70% of the time. N’Golo I think he ran 13 kilometers … At the end of the match, I asked him again and he said: ‘I think we’re going to wait a bit before saying that’ “Mendy recalled.

He waited but did not fail. Chelsea passed first in Group E, beating Sevilla, Krasnodar and Stade Rennais. In the qualifying rounds he left Atlético de Madrid behind in the round of 16, Porto in the quarterfinals and Real Madrid in the semifinals. In the final, Kai Havertz’s goal in minute 42 made the start of the season prediction good for Chelsea’s ‘seven’.