Michael Duberry battled through Bell’s Palsy to start in Chelsea’s victorious UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup final against Stuttgart.
The Blues cult hero has opened up on being struck down with temporary facial paralysis just weeks prior to the match before cementing his place in club folklore.
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Now 50 years old, Duberry was regarded as one of England’s most promising centre-backs during the 1990s after breaking into the Chelsea team as an 18-year-old.
A key player of their double-winning 1997/98 season, Duberry started in both the League Cup final win over Middlesbrough and the Cup Winners’ Cup triumph.
But what fans don’t know is that the Enfield native was in a fight to even make the matchday squad to face German side Stuttgart after being affected by the condition.
Duberry’s diagnosis
Speaking on the SACKED! podcast, with the latest episode published in partnership with The Brain Charity, Duberry said: “I suffered… not many people know this, I don’t tell the story, but the biggest game of my life at the time, the Cup Winners’ Cup.
“I was 20, 21, and two weeks before I suffered from Bell’s Palsy, and people might be going, ‘Well, Bell’s Palsy?’
“It’s, in essence, a mini-stroke, down the side, your face just collapses.
“To give more context over that: 21, I’m in the peak of my powers, as they say, I’m getting rave reviews as one of the best up-and-coming defenders, best English defenders.
“There’s even talk of the race to the World Cup [1998] at the time, and my name’s been mentioned, so I’m doing really well at all levels.
“One day, we finished training, and we used to be like the young lads – myself, Jody Morris, Frank Sinclair, Andy Myers, Eddie Newton, Paul Hughes, Mark Nicholls.
“We used to stay together and we said, ‘Let’s go for lunch,’ I think it was Richmond and we all drove down to Richmond from the Harlington training ground – not the fancy Cobham – it was Harlington.
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“So, we’re having something to eat, we’re in a corner, not too boisterous, but we’re loud and stuff, and we’re having little jokes.
“And then someone goes, ‘Look at your face,’ so, I’m thinking it’s a bit of banter, ‘Yeah, look at your face’ – ‘No, no, seriously, dude, look at your face.’
“And I am going, ‘Look at your face,’ and he says, ‘No, seriously dude, go and look at your face.’
“I go to the toilet, my face is like, and it’s like… I can’t move one side, I look like… if you picture Sloth in the Goonies, a black version of that, so I’m like going, ‘Oh my god’.
“I phone up Mike Banks the physio, and I get an appointment to see our club doctor in Chelsea.
“So I get in my car, and the lads on the way out go, ‘Hey, you guys!’, doing all that sort of stuff, and it’s a bit of banter.
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“I’m driving down the journey, and I’m looking in the mirror and like my face, I can’t move my face, I go see the doctor, and he says, ‘Yeah, you’ve got Bell’s Palsy,’ – ‘What is Bell’s Palsy?’
“I don’t know what Bell’s Palsy is, and he tries to explain it, ‘Well, how long do you have it for?’, because I’m thinking we’ve got a cup final.
“We just beat Middlesbrough in the League Cup final, ‘It can be two weeks, two months, two years,’ that was just the essence of his medical diagnosis.”
Duberry was ultimately taken out of the Chelsea team by then-manager Gianluca Vialli to recover, but through his dedication in training, he won his place back in the team to start against Stuttgart.
He continued: “Every time I played for Chelsea at that time, I was always the young one, so I remember thinking, ‘I mustn’t be the weak link,’ because I’ve got internationals around me.
“I think, ‘This can’t affect me, this can’t affect me,’ and to be fair it didn’t, the magic man, the magician [Gianfranco Zola] scored the winning goal and we won.
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“But I always remember doing the celebrations, I always use that picture when I do some of my talks, and I say to people, ‘What do you see in that picture?’
“And they say, ‘Celebrations, glory,’ and I say, ‘I see Resilience,’ because in pictures, if you see my face there, anyone who has had it can see it straight away, and it just says ‘resilience’ because I had the Bell’s Palsy.
“That’s one of my biggest accomplishments, hurdles, things I’ve ever overcome in my life.
“So having Bell’s Palsy and playing a major cup final and winning is the biggest thing for me.”
Duberry, who would go on to start in the 1-0 win over Real Madrid in the 1998 UEFA Super Cup, featured in a total of 116 matches for Chelsea across all competitions, before joining Leeds in a £4million transfer in 1999.
He retired from the beautiful game in 2013 following subsequent spells at Stoke, Reading, Wycombe, St Johnstone, Oxford and Hendon.