Frank Lampard made me want to leave Chelsea but I stayed and won the Champions League instead

Antonio Rudiger has revealed that he 'really wanted to leave' Chelsea before Thomas Tuchel replaced Frank Lampard and led the Blues to Champions League glory. Rudiger, 30, joined the Blues from Roma in July 2017 and established himself as one of the top defenders in Europe.

After winning the Europa League, the FA Cup, the Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup at Chelsea, Rudiger swapped Stamford Bridge for Real Madrid when his contract expired in 2022. While many supporters would have loved to see the Germany international stay in west London, his steely performances and on-field antics will be remembered fondly.

However, it could have been all so different had Rudiger left Chelsea a year or two earlier when he was struggling for game time. In an interview with Goal, the German revealed that he 'really wanted to leave' west London during Lampard's reign in the dugout.

When asked why he was sidelined by the club's all-time top goal-scorer during the 2019/20 season, Rudiger said: «To be honest, I still can't say exactly what happened back then. That's part of football. Maybe he had other ideas or saw other players better.

»But the good thing about football is that the answer is on the pitch and I think I gave the perfect one. I really wanted to leave. I wanted to leave. I wanted to join Thomas Tuchel at Paris Saint-Germain, that was my wish.

«But it didn't happen and six months later Tuchel came from PSG to Chelsea. We then won the Champions League together. It was probably meant to be.»

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Rudiger was then asked what worked better under Tuchel