It took me two months to adapt to that style.

In those days in the Premier League, there were still a lot of teams that would play that direct game. It’s a philosophy that’s changed with time. First, with the arrival of foreign players, and then with managers from abroad too.

I was one of those foreign players to come to England; a country where I was especially surprised by how little daily press coverage was given to football.

In five years, I think I did five press conferences.

It was the total opposite of Spain, where you had hundreds of journalists around the club and around you every day. Not in London. We only had the Saturday press conference with the manager and one player. Nothing else.

So little press coverage made me feel like I was on holiday in London. The training session would finish, I’d eat at home and then my wife and I would go to the cinema, the theatre or to walk around the city. Nobody bothered you in the street.

People didn’t really recognise you. Even if they did, they would just glance at you. It felt great, by the way.

“In Barcelona I was used to short, intense sessions. At Chelsea, the physical side was worked on as if you were an athlete”

I was also surprised by the club facilities. Nowadays, you see Chelsea and all the buildings at the training ground, and you think it was like that before. But it wasn’t. Roman Abramovich changed it all.

When I was there, we trained next to the airport, in a place the club had rented. Every day, at 11am, I’d look up from the pitch and see Concorde taking off.

It was the dressing rooms that had the biggest impact on me, though. They were like barracks. We’d get changed six at a time because there wasn’t enough room for more of us. It was all a bit scruffy – and it was bitterly cold.

We’d start to train and Gianluca Vialli, who was player/manager at the time, would join us in the session, just like any other player. He’d do the warm-up, the same routines, play the training match.

I was amazed.