Winston Bogarde denied commuting from Amsterdam for Chelsea training, but was left without a £40,000-a-week contract and played just 12 games over four years.

Chelsea handing out long contracts can make fans cringe…as they’ve been burned by it before.

Benoit Badiashile and Mykhailo Mudryk are the latest stars to join Todd Boehly’s craze at Stamford Bridge and push their spending over £400m in just a few months, and have been awarded contracts spanning over seven years.

It may be silly or a coup, as it means Chelsea can spread the liabilities over several years to avoid breaking the rules of financial fair play.

Those kinds of deals seem unheard of, much like Winston Bogarde’s four-year deal in 2000.

That was in the days before Roman Abramovich and he was given a whopping £40,000 a week, an attractive rate back then.

You can see why Chelsea wanted him though, as they won the Champions League with Ajax in 1995, before going on to claim back-to-back LaLiga titles with Barcelona.

Gianluca Vialli was the manager when Bogarde joined, only to be sacked and replaced by Claudio Ranieri a week later.

It was deemed to be above the requirements, but the then 30-year-old was more than happy to just collect his £40,000 a week and not play.

He made 11 appearances during his first year at the club, none in his second, before a final appearance in his third against Gillingham in the League Cup. He again played zero minutes in the fourth and final year of his contract.

“They had to cut costs,” he told The Guardian. “My situation was not very good and we tried to solve it in many ways. Maybe he’ll lend me or sell me, or whatever. But in the end it didn’t work.

“I was working hard because if the club needs you, the team needs you or if other teams need you, you have to be ready,” he says. I also had some injuries. I hurt my knee, three or four months I was out. So these things come mentally into your head.”

There were also rumors that he traveled to train from Amsterdam three times a week and then returned, something that Bogarde himself has denied.

He grossed £10 million during his four years at Chelsea, almost £850,000 per game.

Bogarde believes that the reputation that followed him after his time at Stamford Bridge prevented him from getting a job, despite holding a UEFA A licence.

He was turned down by both Motherwell and Oldham in 2015, but returned to Ajax in 2017 as assistant manager for their reserves.

“It’s still dragging with me, maybe all my life. Everyone makes mistakes and I have learned from it, but you have to keep going,” she added.

Bogarde’s life also took a bizarre turn after leaving Chelsea when he closed a gambling club he owned in 2007 after a gang murder, while he was also reportedly thrown out of his £3.2m home. sterling in Amsterdam.

Chelsea fans will expect far less trouble from their late stars than they did with Bogarde.

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