Former Chelsea manager Luiz Felipe Scolari has claimed that Nicolas Anelka is the reason he was sacked by Chelsea back in 2009.
The Brazilian was shown the door by the Blues just seven months after taking charge with reports suggesting his inability to speak fluent English was blame.
However, the 69-year-old insists that was not the case and that French striker Anelka was to blame.
Luiz Felipe Scolari has claimed that Nicolas Anelka was the reason he was sacked by Chelsea
The Brazilian says that the former striker refused to play on the wing during his time in charge
The London club had started the 2008-09 season well but problems arose when Didier Drogba returned from injury, Anelka refusing to move from a central forward position.
‘I had Anelka playing up front. Nine. Top scorer in the league,’ Scolari told ESPN Brazil.
‘The players return, I make a meeting, and in the meeting I say: ‘Look, now that the players have all returned, Drogba is back after two months, we will try to work a situation involving the two attackers playing one by the side, one in the centre, changing positions’.
‘Then Anelka, the league’s top scorer, said: ‘I do not play on the wing’. Well, that’s when I said: ‘You don’t play on the wing, one’s going to be on the left, it’s over, I’m not going to stay here arguing with you guys’.
‘I left there and our team was third in the league, three or four points behind top. Qualified for the round-of-16 or quarter-finals of the Champions League. But there was this bad environment, that situation.
Scolari says the Frenchman (right) created a bad environment for him to manage
‘I don’t know if I had continued, what would have happened. But it was interrupted. There, I got upset.
‘They’ll say: ‘Oh, because you didn’t speak English perfectly’. Of course, I did not. I didn’t speak English perfectly. But I understood perfectly.
‘We understood, with my English, and the English that was spoken there, we understood perfectly.’
Scolari is currently a free agent having chosen not to extend his contract after leading Chinese club Guangzhou Evergrande to consecutive league titles.