THE THURSDAY INTERVIEW: CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DEBUT

Ten years ago this month a Chelsea team took to the Champions League stage for the first time. Chelseafc.com talks to members of that side about the mood and ambition at the time.

As Chelsea's name sat there proudly in the pot of eight top seeds at the Champions League draw last week (a position denied to such as Real Madrid, Inter and Juventus); and as we look at a list of Uefa rankings that show the club as the second most consistent side in European competition over the past five seasons, how easy has it become to forget that a mere 10 years ago we were excitedly pulling up a chair to Europe's top table for the very first time?

Yet September 1999 was indeed when Stamford Bridge hosted full blown Champions League football for the first time.

Thrilling progress during the Hoddle/Gullit/Vialli era led up to a third-place Premier League finish the campaign before and with a two-legged qualifier safely negotiated against Skonto Riga (or 'the Skontons' as TV pundit Barry Venison memorably referred to the side from Latvia), our name was pulled out with three others in the group stage draw. First game up…AC Milan at home!

'Your mind is half and half because one half wants the easiest group to go through but the other half wants to play the big ones, because that is what Champions League is all about. So yes it was special to get Milan.'

Those are recollections of Gustavo Poyet whose header against Leeds has put Chelsea into the Champions League qualifier in the first place. He describes the home match against Skonto Riga as feeling like a cup final knowing what the rewards were.

'All the time through your career you have thought you are able to play against the big teams and having the chance to bring Milan to Stamford Bridge was immense for all the players as well as the fans.

'It was a challenge to go on the pitch and see if we were able to compete with them. It was a big, big task and 0-0 here and 1-1 away meant we were at the same level.'

The Bridge at last decked out in the Champions League logos we had seen all over other English grounds for years before; the anthem played to a heaving stadium; legends like Maldini, Costacurta and Albertini plus big new signing Shevchenko in red and black; enthralling pass and move football; Gianfranco Zola hitting the post. It was a brilliant introduction for Chelsea to what the best of this competition was all about.

One player in blue that night did not find it new at all.

'I was used to it for sure,' nods Marcel Desailly, twice a winner of the European Cup who was lining up against his former team; but it was special for Chelsea.

'When you talked with Dennis Wise and others, they had never experienced that type of game and it really had some emotion.

'In the ground it was electric, but the type of atmosphere where you are feeling the people ready to support but at the same time you feel the crowd really anxious about how we are going to approach the evening.'

In the dressing room however, confidence was not lacking.

'We really believed that we could qualify from the group,' says Desailly. Opponents to come were Hertha Berlin and Galatasaray.

'We were coming into it having won the Cup Winners' Cup two seasons before and also we had won the Super Cup against Real Madrid,' points out Poyet.

Of course for us this was an extra step and I remember waiting the whole summer to play in it. We knew that we had the quality so we needed to get through the group and go from there.'

Fans happy that the team had not looked out of depth as they left the Milan game could have been forgiven for thinking the highpoint of this debut campaign had now passed. They were wrong.

'Halfway through the group stages we were in a difficult position because we needed to go to Galatasaray which is always a difficult place to go and to Milan before playing our last home game,' Poyet recounts. 'And we did it, with a 5-0 win and a 1-1 draw so it was an amazing second part of the group.

'Oh yes, I remember winning 5-0 in Turkey when Zola and Flo scored a lot,' smiles Desailly. 'What an experience! When you see the atmosphere, it was a great result.'

Berlin were then beaten 2-0 in the final home game with Didier Deschamps and Albert Ferrer netting their only Chelsea goals meant top spot in the group and access to what in those days was a second group stage.

Well into our stride by now, Marseille, Feyenoord and Lazio were not enough to prevent further progress into the knockout stages, even if the Italian club did inflict a first ever home defeat in Europe, despite a great Poyet goal.

'I think the memory of the game was the celebration really,' says the executor of a sweet 30-yarder. 'I don't know why I put the captain's armband over my head. The goal was not a header so I still don't know why. I remember first the goal and then the silly celebration!'

On to the quarter-final and can it really be that in 2009 drawing Barcelona in the Champions League results in the odd stifled yawn?

Imagine telling that to the thousands leaping around inside Stamford Bridge as Zola and Tore Andre Flo, outstanding as a strike pair through out, made it 3-0 before half time.

That Luis Figo pulled back a crucial away goal, and then an unusually cautious Chelsea had been seven minutes from going through at Camp Nou before total capitulation in extra-time, is a story too famous to need much re-telling.

Dejection is the word Desailly uses to describe his mood when it ended this way. Poyet just remains puzzled.

'The manager Luca Vialli decided not to play me in either leg against Barcelona and he needed someone to mark Pep Guardiola who was the central midfielder in the second game. Playing in Spain I had five consecutive years against Guardiola so 10 times for sure we had marked each other. For manager to pick somebody else to do that job in that kind of game was very disappointing.

'I will never agree with that decision but you have to be fair with the manager and with the team and it did work in the first game at home. Unfortunately it didn't work in the second one where we were destroyed.'

Our time to beat Barcelona would come in later years, but the 1999/2000 team had still announced Chelsea's arrival on this stage in superb style.

'In that period we were having difficulties away from home in England with the smaller teams because that was all about fighting spirit, English style, and the team tactically and technically was having much more ability to compete in the European game,' explains Desailly.

'We had a lot of players who were clever tactically. It was the good and the bad at the same time.'

'That Chelsea team was almost unique,' suggests Poyet. 'I don't think it happens in too many teams that so many players go on to become coaches and managers. It has been amazing and is maybe why that team is special, because we understood the game in such a way.

'The atmosphere in the stadium was unbelievable. Every European night at Stamford Bridge was special. At that time we were more a cup team than a championship team,' he adds, 'able to beat anyone on the day. We were winning cups every year. What was difficult for us was the consistency that you need to win the Premier League.'

And indeed as the team progressed in Europe, it did take over the season in most hearts and minds, even if the FA Cup was also won at the very end. Poyet admits this.

'Football players are human as well and of course if you are playing in the Premiership on Saturday and on Tuesday you have Milan or Barcelona or Lazio, in your mind all the time is the Champions League, even if you don't want it. Especially your first participation. If you play every year it becomes normal.

'For us I remember at the weekend everyone saying let's win this league game and after two or three goals we can relax and think about Tuesday.'

The birth of Champions League Chelsea was an important step forward for the club and an anniversary worth noting. But does it seem a whole decade ago to those who lived it close up?

'It is unbelievable how old we are!' exclaims Poyet. 'Times go past and you don't remember how long has gone.'

'Really? You are telling me it is 10 years ago?' Desailly queries before laughing out loud. 'It feels like it was yesterday. Amazing!'

1st Stage Group H
Chelsea 0-0 Milan	15 September 1999
Hertha Berlin 2-1 Chelsea	21 September 1999
Chelsea 1-0 Galatasaray	28 September 1999
Galatasaray 0-5 Chelsea	20 October 1999
Milan 1-1 Chelsea	26 October 1999
Chelsea 2-0 Hertha Berlin	3 November 1999

2nd Stage Group D
Chelsea 3-1 Feyenoord	24 November 1999
Lazio 0-0 Chelsea	7 December 1999
Marseille 1-0 Chelsea	29 February 2000
Chelsea 1-0 Marseille	8 March 2000
Feyenoord 1-3 Chelsea	14 March 2000
Chelsea 1-2 Lazio	22 March 2000

Quarter-Final
Chelsea 3-1 Barcelona	05 April 2000
Barcelona 5-1 Chelsea	18 April 2000

	Apps	Goals
G Ambrosetti	1+4	1
C Babayaro	13	1
S Dalla Bona	0+1
E de Goey	14
M Desailly	14
D Deschamps	13	1
R Di Matteo	3+6
A Ferrer	13	1
T Flo	13+1	8
J Harley	1+2
J Hogh	1+3
B Lambourde	0+2
F Leboeuf	12+1	1 pen
G Le Saux	2+1
J Morris	5+5
D Petrescu	11+2	1
G Poyet	9+3	1
C Sutton	2+4
E Thome	1
D Wise	12+1	4
G Zola	14	3