Former Chelsea defender Khalid Boulahrouz feels the kit man at Stamford Bridge played a trick on him when it came to selecting his shirt number when he joined the Blues in 2006, admitting Jose Mourinho expressed surprise.
Boulahrouz joined Chelsea from Hamburg in the summer of 2006, during Mourinho’s final full season in charge of his first spell at Stamford Bridge.
Despite earning a big move to the Premier League, Boulahrouz struggled to hit the ground running with Chelsea and was eventually shipped out of the club, initially on loan in the next season.
He bizarrely took the number 9 shirt at Chelsea, despite being a defender, and feels that it came about because the kit man set him up.
Boulahrouz revealed the kit man at Chelsea offered him numbers such as 45 and 47, following the number 9, and so he decided to go with the infamous number worn by the likes of Gianluca Vialli and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
“I had to choose a number”, Boulahrouz told FOX Sports Vandaag Voetbalzomer.
“The kit man started at number 9, then he quickly jumped to 45, 47. Then I thought, yes, I am not going to play with that kind of number.
“So I said okay, give me number nine.”
The defender also recalled when he spoke to Mourinho in the aftermath of taking number 9, who, surprised, suggested he could have taken number 2, if the other numbers were not appealing to him.
“He [Mourinho] said: ‘Why did you take number nine’?”, he continued.
“’The number two is available as well’.
“And I thought, oh God … What am I doing, man?
"The kit man set me up, I think", the former Dutch international laughed.
Boulahrouz failed to score for Chelsea during his only season at the club during their 2006/07 campaign, despite wearing the number 9 shirt.
