Thomas Tuchel has lifted the lid on the chaotic scenes inside Chelsea's dressing room after their Carabao Cup final defeat by Liverpool as the team's medical staff performed 'surgery' to help Trevoh Chalobah with a nasty groin injury.
Midway through the second half of the Blues' nail-biting final against Jurgen Klopp's side, Naby Keita missed as he challenged Chalobah for a high ball and planted his studs into his opponent's groin.
Both went down in agony, and Chelsea were given a free-kick - but no further punishment was dished out to Keita despite VAR being in use at Wembley Stadium.
Chalobah managed to get back to his feet and play the entire 120 minutes, before going on to score his penalty in the shootout.
But, as Tuchel revealed on Tuesday, the defender was in agony and Chelsea's medical staff were performing 'surgery' as they stitched up his wounds.
'I could not believe what I saw after the match. There was surgery literally in our dressing room and I am not joking,' Tuchel said ahead of his side's FA Cup fifth round tie with Luton on Wednesday.
'They were stitching him up. I could not believe it. After the match, after the press conference when I left they were doing the stitches, I just heard him scream. It looked horrible.
'I went in and saw it, it looked horrible and I could not believe he played one more minute with this kind of injury but he played the rest of the match and scored a penalty.
'This is really big. I would say he has shown some balls but that would be the wrong line but he was really brave to do this. Full credit to him.'
'Very close to his... You could not look away,' Tuchel continued. 'They had surgery, there were stitches. It was there. He was the only one with the doctors and I heard the noise.
'Seriously it was a proper cut, very close to the area of the groin. It was open and it needed to be closed.
'I decided not to tell today because we have so many of the players overloaded and with these kind of injuries I do not want to give too much information and make preparation for Luton a bit too easy. I don't want to do it.
'We are working on it. He was very tough and he has my full respect.'
Chalobah was quick to take to social media to slam referee Stuart Attwell's decision not to penalise Keita for the foul.
He wrote on Twitter: 'Had to get stitches because of this. Referee is right there I don’t get it??'