Former Chelsea youngster Nick Hamann spoke exclusively to Hannah Duncan about what a typical day entails for a foreign player at an English club.
0830: Leave my digs near Harlington to go to training in Cobham. Before I was 17, I had a driver who would pick me up every morning. When we used to train in Harlington, I had a bike I would ride to training and when we moved to Cobham, Chelsea offered to move me over there, but I turned it down because I loved the digs in Harlington.
0900: Breakfast at the training ground. I never really had to eat English food as the chef at Chelsea was Italian!
1030: Training started. We would sometimes have gym sessions, swimming or massages before and after training – going on until about 3:30, but generally training on the pitch would last 90minutes. We would often hang around after because there was everything there, from Playstations to snooker and darts.
1600: For the first two years, I had to study three times a week – including English and nutrition. I’d also do a lot with the lads after training as well, we were a great bunch and I’m still in contact with a lot of them.
1800: Back to digs for dinner there or sometimes I went for dinner with some of the players. Every Sunday my digs had a family roast where I was always there no matter what, with Julia and Franco (my digs parents), their two daughters, two son in-laws, three grandkids and Robert Huth.
2000: There weren’t any rules set by the club about when we had to be in or anything like that, they left that to the digs parents. I think we all knew that as a Chelsea player you had to behave a certain way and represent the club in a good way. So there was never really a need for them to make up any rules.
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