This week the Chelsea players began work with the club's new first team fitness coach, Jose Mario Rocha. The Official Chelsea Website fInds out more about one of Andre Villas-Boas's members of staff…

Jose Mario Rocha has been alongside Andre Villas-Boas throughout his short but highly successful management career so far, but their history together goes back further than those single seasons at Porto last campaign and at Academica the year before.

The story of Villas-Boas given his first chance to coach with the youth team at Porto by Bobby Robson has been told frequently in recent weeks, and working alongside the young man with those youth players back then was the more experienced Rocha.

Chelsea's new first team fitness coach has 19 years of experience working in the professional game, the first 17 of those in the set-up at Porto where he was employed as a general coach. It included a spell at Padronese FC, a club whose youth team is effectively the Porto youth second 11.

'In Porto I have worked from the Under 14 team up to the first team,' says Rocha, a surname that is pronounced in a way that rhymes with "posher".

'I worked with Andre with the Under 17s and it started the relationship at that stage.Later when he was at Inter Milan, he called me and said hello Jose, come with me for another life and I said okay, let's go, because I believe in this guy.'

That new life was to take over at Academica in Coimbra, 100 miles south of Porto, which in turn is 5km from Rocha's home town of Gondomar. He couldn't have guessed then how soon he would be reacquainted with his old life.

'It was a surprise, only one year in Academica and then to go again to Porto and another position, but it was very nice. I needed to leave the club to come back with a higher position.'

The new coaching and fitness team at Estadio do Dragao hit the ground running and they broke the finishing tape at the end of the 2010/11 season with a domestic league and cup double, the Europa League won and new records set.

It was a ringing endorsement of their methods, a way of working that Rocha believes will translate well to English football and the competitions in which Chelsea will compete.

'Because I believe in my work, in my style and my thinking, and I have results, these don't change,' states the 48-year-old.

'It is possible to change the training plan for pre-season if we need to but at the moment the plan is complete. Andre and the staff decide the plan and the way of work is the same as we had before.

'So far the training is very good. The players liked the first day so for me it is fantastic working in this club because you have the good players and the good facilities. It is very nice.'

It wasn't only new introductions with the squad this week. There was also reacquaintance. When Rocha was in his first season as a coach at Porto having graduated from studying sport at the city's university, Hilario was his goalkeeper in the Under 19s team. And although he missed out on coaching Paulo Ferreira, the season after Jose Mourinho and his staff left the Portuguese club for Chelsea, Rocha moved up to work with the first team where Jose Bosingwa was in the side.

Other non-Chelsea players he developed in the Porto youth system include former Tottenham striker Helder Postiga, Portuguese international midfielder Paulo Machado, currently at Toulouse, Helder Barbosa who was part of the Braga squad that contested the Europa League Final and Rui Oscar, a now-retired Portuguese league winner with Boavista.

Now the coach begins another 'new life' with Chelsea, his first time working abroad.

'I have four kids, two boys and two girls with the oldest at university. My wife is working as a teacher so I may not move my family this year,' he explains.

'But I will live in London, not Cobham. Andre talked with me and told me the

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