The 31-year-old wing-back, who scored five goals in 46 games for the Blues in 2021/22, spoke to the official Chelsea matchday programme about his special connection to the club that he joined from Fiorentina in the summer of 2016.

You have played over 200 games for Chelsea and described this as ‘the club of your life’. What makes it that?

I think six years with a club is a long time and I have so many good memories, good moments at Stamford Bridge. It’s also been six years in London and they have been very happy moments in my life. I’ve had to put in a lot of hard work and a lot of effort, but we have also reached a lot of finals, won a lot of titles and had many memorable games.

I’ve also made so many friends at the club and in London. They say, “Once a Blue, always a Blue” and I think, for me, that’s true. I will definitely always be a Blue.

I’m very proud to have become a part of the history of Chelsea and to have spent all these years here. To feel all the love and support of the fans of such a big club as this, to have played so many games, fought for so many titles… I think that’s what you play the game for and to do all this at Chelsea is a dream come true, for sure.

Many players who have signed for Chelsea in the last 20 years or so have said they want to win the Champions League, and that happened for you. That must be a special feeling.

Well, the Premier League title came quickly at the end of my first season here! Then the main thing was the Champions League, and to be able to lift it was definitely something special. That’s something that has to motivate us even more to keep fighting for these big trophies and to keep training hard so we can keep achieving these kinds of things.

You were a striker as a kid and your goal in the 1-1 draw at Manchester United was yet another example of you finishing like one.

That was a long, long time ago that I played as a striker, but in the role I play, for most of the time since I arrived, we’ve been allowed to join in the play at both ends. That’s what we get asked to do by the managers in the last few seasons, and I’m always happy to help the team.

We have so much quality in the squad and this helps us to get into these attacking positions and take advantage of these situations to help the team with goals as well.

You have to time your arrival well, and wing-back seems a good position to do that from without being picked up.

Yeah, because you come into the box a little bit later and sometimes it’s kind of a surprise for the defenders when we do this. It requires a lot of running but it’s also a great reward when you are able to provide goals or assists.

You certainly show a lot of determination to make things happen when games are tight. You got the breakthrough at Old Trafford, you helped force the winner against West Ham, and you also intervened with a crucial defensive header in that game even later on. Is it part of your mentality to grit your teeth and go again when it looks like time might be running out?

It’s maybe something in me. I have always had this spirit of competition, of leaving everything on the pitch, going until the last breath to try and get the points, the win. Maybe sometimes it doesn’t happen, but when you are there every time, sometimes you get the reward for it and that is the best feeling you can get.

It depends on the game, though. Sometimes you feel more tired and the game is already on our side, so maybe you don’t need to take that extra risk. But when the game requires it, and I still have a drop of oil in the tank, I will go for it. When these kinds of things come off, it’s the best feeling you can have on the football pitch and that’s what we train hard every day for, that’s why we recover well to be ready for the next one, and why we fight for everything during the whole season. It’s all so that we can enjoy those big moments and end the season fighting for titles, as this club requires.

Would the young boy that was Marcos Alonso ever have considered the possibility of making an impact in English football?

I don’t know. When I was younger maybe I would never have expected this, but then the Premier League became one of the most attractive leagues in the world. From my first day in this country to today, the evolution of the quality of this league, and how it became more and more international, has been great.

I am more than happy to have been able to live this period in English football and to grow at the same time as the Premier League. I’m very happy to have spent most of my career in this league.