On May 19, 2022, Chelsea will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their momentous Champions League triumph at the Allianz Arena; where Roberto Di Matteo's plucky underdogs toppled Bayern Munich in their own backyard to become kings of Europe against all odds.
Up until that point the famous trophy with the big ears eluded Roman Abramovich in his nine-year reign as Blues owner. Seven different managers had been and gone along the way, some of them departing after messy divorces, as he embarked on a relentless, cold-blooded pursuit of the European Cup.
Yet on that historic night in the Bavarian capital, when the west London club were confronted with adversity like never before, the stars well and truly aligned for both Abramovich and a tight-knit group of senior players who had accompanied him on this obsessive quest to lift the Champions League.
Florent Malouda was one of the Chelsea warhorses who finally captured the holy grail that evening after years of heartbreak in the competition. In an exclusive interview with Sportsmail, the Frenchman takes a look back on the highs and lows of the Blues journey which led him to Munich.
Fresh from winning a fourth consecutive Ligue 1 title, Malouda waved goodbye to Lyon in the summer of 2007 and sealed a £17million move to Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea were still reeling from their first defeat in the Premier League title race under Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho's Blues had missed out on a third successive crown in the 2006/07 season and were hellbent on reclaiming it the following year. Though, with Malouda their only expensive arrival that summer, tensions between a stroppy Mourinho and an irked Abramovich were simmering before a ball had even been kicked.
A run of three wins in seven games at the start of the season subsequently tingled Abramovich's trigger finger for the very first time, with Mourinho given the boot in a stunning dismissal just one month into the new campaign.
And for Malouda, who had made a decent start to his Blues career by registering a goal and three assists, it was a shock to the system.
'When it happened it was very emotional because of everything Jose Mourinho represented,' he recalls. 'He was really associated with Chelsea's success.
'He was a successful manager, so for me it was shocking. But I would say at the club it was business as usual because we had to deliver in the next game.
'I remember when I came to the training ground the next morning there were paparazzi in front of the training ground and helicopters in the air. But then in the dressing room it was just like "we have a game to play".
'We said goodbye to the manager and then we were suddenly getting ready to play the next game. It was quite a bizarre experience.
'But really, at Chelsea you have to learn [to deal with this] very, very quick.'
Two months before Mourinho's departure, Abramovich somewhat undermined the Portuguese by appointing Avram Grant above him as a director of football. The ex-Israel manager's arrival belittled Mourinho's influence in the transfer market and reportedly contributed to his downfall in SW6.
So when Grant was ushered into the top job on a temporary basis after the axing of a man they worshipped, Chelsea fans made their displeasure known.
Few of them would have foreseen exactly how close he would come to the most unlikely of trebles that season. In the wake of Mourinho's departure, Grant steadied the ship and guided the Blues to both the League Cup and Champions League finals, only to suffer gut-wrenching extra-time and penalty-shootout defeats against Tottenham and Manchester United, who also pipped them to the Premier League title again on the last day of the season. He had missed out on three major trophies by the skin of his teeth.
Though it was the Champions League blow which undoubtedly hit hardest. On a rainy Wednesday night almost 2,000 miles east in Moscow, Didier Drogba was sent off for slapping Nemanja Vidic and John Terry, the heart-on-sleeve captain who bleeds Chelsea blue, infamously slipped and missed a match-winning penalty in the shootout. Edwin van der San later denied Nicolas Anelka to crown United European champions and trigger Terry's tears.
'It was a valuable experience because it was my first Champions League final, but it was a disappointing result. Especially in Moscow, for our owner it would have been a gift,' Malouda, who started for Chelsea on the night, recalls.
'It just wasn't meant to be and for this squad of players I think it was also a motivation, because when you lose in the big cup finals and you are second, you have this feeling of failure but you are still performing [well].
'Avram Grant did a speech right after the game, because he knew the consequences of losing a final and I think he was already preparing for the next season. So he had some interesting words.
'After that the experienced players, those who had won finals and those who had also lost finals, talked to us because we knew we would still be together as players and we would have other opportunities to compete and win that trophy.
'We had to keep our heads up because we had a great run in the Champions League, we were close, but we still had to keep the motivation to win it. It was not our last chance.'
Despite his encouraging speech in Moscow, Grant's apparent preparations for the following season proved needless in the end, as Abramovich decided against handing him the permanent reins and instead hired World Cup winner Luis Felipe Scolari that summer.
Scolari lasted just seven months in what was slowly becoming a poisoned chalice, becoming Abramovich's latest victim after falling seven points behind leaders United.
Interim replacement Guus Hiddink managed to end the campaign on a high by winning the FA Cup, Malouda's first piece of silverware as a Chelsea player, and if not for a questionable refereeing display from Tom Henning Ovrebo and a stoppage-time Andres Iniesta strike he would have guided them to a second straight Champions League final.
But it was under the next permanent boss whom Malouda enjoyed the finest, most fruitful form of his Chelsea career. Carlo Ancelotti rocked up on the Fulham Road in 2009 and propelled the Blues back to the top of English football; recording a famous Premier League and FA Cup double while shattering a number of goalscoring records in the process.
Malouda, who formed a sensational attacking triumvirate with Anelka and Didier Drogba that year, was on hand with 15 goals and as many assists in all competitions, which he puts down to the faith installed in him by Ancelotti.
'I would say offensively with Chelsea that's where I had the most consistency in terms of assisting and scoring. I was very decisive offensively and I really managed to earn the trust and the confidence of my team-mates,' the 41-year-old gushed.
'That was really thanks to how Carlo Ancelotti made me work and trusted me as well. He treated me as an experienced player and gave me a lot of responsibilities, and I was ready for it.
'It was great, because I learned a lot from him not only as a manager but also as a man; about how to cope with the pressure, how to deliver and how to trust other people.'
Ancelotti's swashbuckling trio helped Chelsea rifle home 103 league goals in 2009/10, with Drogba taking home the Golden Boot for his tally of 29. Up until 2018, it was the highest amount of team goals scored in a 38-game season.
Malouda continued: 'I played with Didier before Chelsea but I never played with Nicolas Anelka. For me, he was one of the pioneers when he was with Arsenal, he was a role model, and to be able to support him and Didier upfront, each one competing for the Golden Boot with so many goals, and to be involved in those offensive opportunities was great.
'That year everybody was scoring. We were able to apply so much pressure, it could be in open play, it could be from set-pieces, it could be from penalties. We had so many different ways to score and if one didn't score they were assisting the other. We were sharing goals, it was a great feeling.
'I don't remember ever experiencing that in another team. So now we can realise that, but in the moment we were just happy to be playing together, scoring... and a lot of the time we were just talking about how we were going to celebrate!'
Just 12 months after winning the double, Ancelotti was gone on the back of a trophy-less campaign, a Champions League quarter-final exit against United and an underwhelming defence of the title, despite finishing second to Sir Alex Ferguson's men.
The Italian was informed of Abramovich's decision, which remains his most brutal as Chelsea commander-in-chief, in the tunnel at Goodison Park after their last game of the season at Everton.
Malouda admits Ancelotti fell victim to the increasing levels of expectation at Chelsea.
'I think Ancelotti not winning a trophy just wasn't enough for the board,' he says. 'That mentality to deliver... even if you win a trophy it could not be enough.
'But that was the price to pay. We were supposed to win trophies with the attacking style and scoring goals, and in this case it's always the manager who pays the price first.'
It didn't take long for Abramovich to bloody his managerial axe once more; as just nine months into his tenure Andres Villas-Boas, the young coach tasked with replacing Ancelotti, was shown the door amid a dreadful run of form which left them languishing outside the top four and on the brink of a Champions League exit.
In came Di Matteo, who stepped up from his role as assistant to become the latest interim coach tasked with picking up the pieces.
Not only did he manage that, the former Chelsea midfielder inspired a heroic fightback from 3-1 down against Napoli in the Champions League last-16, successfully navigated past Benfica in the quarters, masterminded one of the greatest European victories of all time over Barcelona in the semis and then found himself in the final.
The odds were stacked against his Chelsea side ending their recent anguish in the competition and lifting the trophy for the first time, and when Thomas Muller edged Bayern ahead with seven minutes of the final remaining it seemed all but over.
That was until a Blue miracle played out in Munich; with Drogba first powering home a bullet header five minutes later, and then, after Petr Cech denied Arjen Robben from the penalty spot in extra-time, tucking away the winning spot-kick in a dramatic shootout.
'For us, compared to the Moscow final we were aware that it could be our last final together as a squad,' Malouda admits.
'The preparation was very strange because we had lots of injuries. We were playing Bayern Munich in Munich, so we knew that it would be very difficult. I think we won this Champions League against all the odds.
'We believed. We believed. Maybe that's the year where everybody wrote us off, but mentally we were prepared to die on the pitch.
'I came off the bench in the final but I was also injured, and we had injured players that started and played the whole game and then took penalties.
'Mentally we were ready to do anything to win, we were not thinking football, tactics or anything. We said just one trophy and we will make history and go back home with it.
'I cannot tell you one reason why we won this game the way we won it, but the scenario was perfect. And I think this is something that unites us forever. The first time a London club won the Champions League and with this incredible squad of players.'
Though if Drogba had suffered the same fate as Terry in Moscow, would he have been next up from the spot?
'Honestly I don't even remember,' Malouda laughs. 'Since I arrived at Chelsea, with Didier, [Frank] Lampard and [Michael] Ballack there, I wasn't even allowed to go near the penalty spot!
'I think Salomon Kalou was before me and I was probably sixth or seventh on the list.'
Many felt Villas-Boas' unusual decision to demote Chelsea's crop of senior players, including Lampard and Ashley Cole, played the biggest part in his undoing at the Bridge. The first move Di Matteo made after replacing him was to restore those important figures to the side, and it turned out to be a masterstroke.
Yet, some believe the wise older heads were the true architects of their iconic Champions League run that year. Di Matteo, it has since been suggested, simply let them get on with it and reap the rewards.
'It is true that the experienced players stepped up at some point,' Malouda says.
'I remember when we lost away at Napoli and everybody thought we were out, but we had a couple of meetings where we looked each other in the eyes and said what was needed to be said, and to focus on our last chance to win that trophy.
'So yeah, there were big characters and some responsibility taken from the players, but you cannot underestimate the contribution of anyone, including Roberto Di Matteo, because the manager has to make decisions and the pressure wasn't easy for him.
'But he made the right ones and he won the trophy. He's the first manager in Chelsea history to lift the trophy.
'This victory just shows how when you are united as a squad, the result is positive. For life I will be grateful to Roberto Di Matteo, for every choice he made in that Champions League campaign, but we are all part of this historical team.
'So you can give the praise to whoever you want, it's not that important afterwards! But it was something historic for Chelsea.'
While Munich was the cherry on the cake, Malouda did not conclude his Chelsea story on a high.
After entering the final year of his contract and being deemed surplus to requirements by Di Matteo, Blues officials unsuccessfully tried to move him on that summer and he was left to train with the Under 21s for the entirety of his farewell season.
It was cruel treatment of a man whose efforts contributed significantly to five major trophies in six years at Stamford Bridge. For most modern players, any relationship with the club would now be soured beyond repair.
But as our chat draws to a close, Malouda insists he holds no grudges about the way it ended for him at Chelsea.
'I must say it's not something you prepare for. I'd just won the Champions League and then I spent a year with the Under-21s without being able to even play,' he admits.
'But I don't have any regrets because it had to happen like that. I think that's also part of my Chelsea career, so I'm not ashamed of it.
'It was a difficult experience for me, but I think I have mutual respect with the board, with Marina [Granovskaia], with the owner, and really there's no bad feelings. The last time I came back to Chelsea, I was welcomed.
'Looking forward, the doors are open, we have a good relationship, we are still in contact and I am still a Chelsea fan.'