Chelsea v Manchester United: Michael Ballack still haunted by Champions League final defeat

Scolari, who was sacked two years ago, has blamed his failure on what he saw as the preening self-interest of the players, singling out Ballack and Didier Drogba for special criticism.

Ballack, who deals with people as he strikes a football (clean and straight), is bemused.

“I read what he said about me and some of the other Chelsea players and I’m really surprised by this,” he said. “To talk like this about us, his former players like this - I thought he was a person with class. I had no problem with him when he was the manager but now he has said something about me having a problem with Deco and I just can’t understand that.”

Ballack, who moved to Bayer Leverkusen on a free transfer this summer, knows a thing or two about the politics of a dressing room heavy on alpha males. Before Chelsea he played for Bayern Munich, a club rife with Machiavellian machination whose capacity for controversy and scandal earned it the nickname FC Hollywood. He concedes that Chelsea had players who were demanding, even difficult but that these players somehow limited the team’s performance is, for him, nonsense.

“Look, what is clear is that big egos exist in the best teams. This is a positive thing. People like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Drogba have big personalities but these are the qualities you need to make the difference in difficult situations. Of course it’s not always easy for the coach to deal with this situation - it is challenging working with the best players but a challenge in a good way.

“You look at Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti and they did not have a problem with the players and even Avram Grant in my eyes handled the players very well in that way. When Guus Hiddink came in after Scolari you could see that he really enjoyed working with us, the way he celebrated when we won the FA Cup. The egos do not change from manager to manager. So I was really surprised by what Scolari said.”

Looking in from the outside, he still sees the same dynamic at work. “I still see the hunger in this team, in these players,” he said. “I came over to see them for the Fulham game and went into the dressing room. I stay in touch with players and staff at the club and I know the ambition is still there.

“Everybody knows how much Roman [Abramovich] wants to win the Champions League and any player who has been at the club in the last four, five or six years feels this ambition. I still see that hunger there.”

Ballack will be back in London on Wednesday, working as a pundit on the game for Sky. He has competed in the Champions League for the past 12 seasons so it will be strange being on the outside. After the game he will fly back to Germany on a Lear jet in time for training in the morning. Leverkusen are hauling in leaders Dortmund in the Bundesliga. It looks like he will get one more go in this competition next season.

It is a competition with a unique pull on Abramovich, too, and this week is not just about a place in the semi-finals, it is also about gaining at least partial redress for the defeat to Manchester United in the final of the 2008 competition. It was an extraordinarily dramatic game. Having gone behind, Chelsea equalised, hit the woodwork twice, had Drogba sent off and then lost in the shoot-out after Terry slipped and missed when in a position to win it.

Even three years later, Ballack is still hurt by the defeat. “It’s hard to remember details of what happened when you lose such a big game, you just remember how much it hurt. I think I had a good game but I remember there was nothing much between the teams. We were at the same level, both teams had a lot of quality but if anything we had the advantage during the game and even in extra time we had the chance to finish it. You go through so many emotions but the way that game finished was unbelievable. We had another chance to win it with JT’s penalty, one kick from the cup.

“People ask you what it feels like to lose these games and I find it very hard to describe what goes through your mind. I’d been there before with Leverkusen in 2002. When a team beats you 3-0 and you know you have been outplayed it is easier to accept than losing in a really tight game like this. It was a game we lost through our own faults, mistakes we made.

“Even after years have gone by you still feel the hurt. I remember just feeling empty. In the dressing room after the game everybody was low, completely disappointed. Nobody could speak, there was nothing to say. The club had arranged some drinks for us, like a party, but most of us just drank a couple of beers and went to our rooms, to talk to friends and family and try to take our minds off it. Even weeks later you still have that emptiness.”

Hard as it was for Ballack and most of the rest of the Chelsea team, Terry had to live with the knowledge that his miss had proved so decisive. Having missed the chance to win a first European Cup for his boyhood club - and as captain - he was inconsolable at the final whistle, unselfconsciously crying in the Moscow rain.

“Everybody thinks John is a strong boy because he looks like he can deal with anything but he is human like the rest of us,” Ballack said. “We are just sportsmen and it affects us just as much. There was not a lot you could say to him after the game. He was crying and told us he was sorry. But we were a team: we won as a team and lost as a team so nobody blamed anyone.”

Having come so close to his perfect victory - Chelsea becoming European champions in Moscow - Abramovich’s motivation was questioned. Would he still have the desire? As one of an influential cadre of players who spoke to the Russian owner, Ballack has detected little diminution in the owners appetite.

“There has always been speculation about him and his ambition. All I can say is that when he was close to the team, on the training ground or in the dressing room after games, he always spoke to you to see if you still had your motivation.

“He would want to know if you were still the right man for his club. You can get that feeling from watching people in matches but especially on the training ground. He was always talking to the staff and the players and you could tell he was still really motivated.”

What about Ballack? Is he, at 34, still motivated by the game? “I feel really good now,” he said. “I had some injuries but now I am playing and enjoying it. I have a year left on my contract. I might decide to play for another year but at the moment that is how I am thinking, from year to year. Of course I have ideas about what I want to do when I retire. I love football and I want to stay working in it, but in what capacity I do not know yet.”

Not hard to take the hint: he’ll be managing a dressing room full of egos of his own before long.