Robert Sanchez talks all things goalkeeping in an exclusive interview for this weekend’s programme, as we prepare to face Arsenal in a top-of-the-table Premier League clash.
The Golden Glove winner at this year’s FIFA Club World Cup is hopeful that our trophy triumphs over the summer will prove to be a springboard for further success in the future, and reveals he has high hopes for this youthful squad.
‘I think it’s a young team with big potential,’ he says. ‘Now we all know each other, we’re all friends, everybody gets on with each other and we understand what the manager wants. We just love, it feels like home.
‘It’s great to be here, everybody is super happy. You can see it in the training sessions and that obviously helps us to show it on the pitch.’
At 28 years old, Sanchez is a senior figure in the dressing room and also in what he calls the club’s ‘goalkeepers’ union’, which is as tightly knit as it sounds.
‘We all get on really well,’ he says. ‘I would say this is probably the best group I’ve been in, for goalkeeping. I mean, it’s great – they’re young guys with massive potential, all of them, which I love to train with every day. They teach me, I teach them, and we compete to be better every day. So, yeah, I love them. It’s a good group.’
Elsewhere in the programme, we look back at a classic encounter with the Gunners as we reflect on Gianluca Vialli’s first game as player-manager back in February 1998, which turned out to be a cup classic of a London derby.
In ‘Over Land & Sea’, our regular feature assessing the impact of different nations on Chelsea history, we look across the channel to France and the many Blues who have also starred for Les Bleus over the years.
Club historian Rick Glanvill takes a different approach this weekend, as he looks inward and tells his own Chelsea story in ‘Through the Sun & Rain’, plus we have all your favourite regular features, bringing you the latest from around the club and everything you need to know ahead of the big game.
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