Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois insists the club's controversial loan system worked for him.

He pushed to move from Genk to Chelsea at the age of 19 in 2011 and then pushed again to go to Spanish giants Atletico Madrid rather than back to Belgium.

"When Chelsea bought me the plan was straight away to loan me out and at the beginning they wanted to loan me out back to my Belgian team but I felt I was at my top there and that I needed the move to keep on growing," he told the Daily Mail.

"So at that time Atletico was an ideal team for me. Maybe Chelsea was a bit concerned because it was a big team and maybe he won't be playing straightaway, but I felt Atletico had confidence in me and I think it was the best thing I could do with my career at that stage. And we started playing, we started to win trophies, and I became much better and grew a lot."