Why N’golo Kante is walking tall at the Blues

N’GOLO Kante was too small to fit the profile of midfielder Jose Mourinho was interested in when Chelsea first looked at him.

And yet Mourinho tried to steal Kante from under the noses of his former employers for Manchester United this summer.

Chelsea had a scouting report written on Kante while he was still playing in France, but Mourinho’s brief at the time was to focus on taller, more robust midfielders.

Mourinho had a different outlook when he called Kante in July to try to convince him to snub Chelsea and instead move to United, but by then the player’s mind was made up.

Size was never going to be an issue for Chelsea’s latest head coach Antonio Conte, who is only marginally taller than Kante and played in midfield for Juventus and Italy.

What was important to Conte is that Chelsea’s very own “mighty mouse” can fit into any system he wants to play, which has already been proved as the Italian has switched from a 4-1-4-1 to a 3-4-3.

While Jamie Vardy rejected the advances of Arsenal and Riyad Mahrez signed a new contract, Kante became the Leicester City Premier League title winner that got away as he joined Chelsea for £30-million.

Asked why he thought Kante gave up Champions League football at Leicester to join Chelsea, a club that finished 10th last season and is in the process of change, Conte laughed and

I started to think that N’Golo was deliberately giving it away because getting it back was so much fun

said: “I don’t know. You must ask him. I hope it was after my conversation with him.”

Vardy tells a story about Kante in his autobiography, From Nowhere, that encapsulates what he is all about. “When he first signed [for Leicester] he didn’t think he’d need a car,” wrote Vardy.

“He said he would walk to training. But he got himself a Mini and that car became his pride and joy.

“In training we’d do a keep-ball box, with 11 of us around the outside and two in the middle, and I started to think that N’Golo was deliberately giving it away because getting it back was so much fun for him.”

Kante could have earned in excess of £100 000-a-week, as he is doing at Chelsea, by staying with the Foxes and would have been paid far more to join either United or Paris SaintGermain.

He missed out on landing a £105 000 BMWi8 as a reward for winning the League from Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and has been parking up his beloved Mini alongside the fleet of different super cars at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground.

Kante, who is single and lives alone, does not fit the stereotype of a Premier League footballer.

He is quiet to the point of being shy, he dresses like a normal human being and there is no affected swagger to his walk. — © The Daily Telegraph, London