The Mourinho Thread

[CHOULO19 24,332]

I love the subs he made. He was very smart in trying to keep the most number of players fresh, especially the players who will be key against PSG: Lampard, Luiz, Eden, Schurrle and Willian.

[Muzchap 8,964]

Yesterday´s win was expected or wasn´t?

Yes in the same way victory was 'guaranteed' against Villa and Palace

Normal humans realise that there are no 'easy' games in the EPL

[bushman 2,043]

Yes in the same way victory was 'guaranteed' against Villa and Palace

Normal humans realise that there are no 'easy' games in the EPL

Yes, I agree. The PL is tough. However, Stokes are not a team that should beat Chelsea. On the other who thought Chelsea could drop points against....?

As for those normal humans....are you one of us?

[Melanicus 5,208]

What a nice gesture by Mou. Shawn Kuykendall passed away because of cancer.

[duo11bluecl 207]

Yes, I agree. The PL is tough. However, Stokes are not a team that should beat Chelsea. On the other who thought Chelsea could drop points against....?

As for those normal humans....are you one of us?

The annoying thing is we threw away the title by losing to Villa and Palace.

[The Chels 2,502]

Diego Torres on Mourinho:

The presence of a mole at Real Madrid worried Mourinho so much that between 2011 and 2012 he ordered two sweeps of the hotel where the team stayed to search for hidden microphones. The investigations were unsuccessful. The Sheraton Mirasierra was apparently clean.

The control of information was another thing that deeply exercised Mourinho; he assigned a group of people to carry out a daily analysis of everything that the media said about him. Every morning Mourinho received a package containing the summary. His day began at 8am in his office at Valdebebas, studying videos, articles and broadcasts. He realised that he and his colleagues were not the only sources of the content, and that certain things that were being published did not exactly project an image of infallibility.

He began to suspect that there were leaks in his organisation. The proximity of the Clásico ramped up his sense of suspicion. According to club sources, the growing fear of leaks made Mourinho ask the directors to set up a study of the phone records of players and club employees. Some players were warned about this informally, as it was in their interest to be careful about whom they spoke to on their mobiles. The secrecy, however, did not prevent the boss’s intentions becoming widely known. In fact they were obvious in every training session.

At 5pm on 16 April 2011, shortly before Madrid’s home league match against Barcelona, the newspaper Marca reported in its online edition that Madrid would play Pepe in midfield, along with Khedira and Alonso. The team selection was unprecedented: Casillas, Ramos, Albiol, Carvalho, Marcelo, Pepe, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Ronaldo and Benzema.

The 1-1 draw did not help the home team’s title chances but the crowd applauded their team off with a certain relief, Barça’s last couple of visits having ended with scores of 0–2 and 2–6, and filed out of the stadium reasonably content. Not so Mourinho.

He waited for the team in the dressing room before issuing a torrent of accusations and insults that distorted his face until he began to sob loudly: “You’re traitors. I asked you not to speak with anyone about the team selection but you’ve betrayed me. It shows that you’re not on my side. You’re sons of bitches.

“The only friend I have in this dressing room is Granero . . . and I’m not even sure that I can trust him any more. You’ve left me all on my own. You’re the most treacherous squad I’ve had in my life. Nothing more than sons of bitches.”

Casillas did not wait for the outburst to finish. He pretended that nothing was happening, turned around and went to the shower; he was not the only one who ignored the commotion. But Mourinho was filled with such intense emotion that he grabbed a can of Red Bull and hurled it against the wall. It exploded and drops of the sugary energy drink ran down the faces of those nearest to him.

Squatting on the ground — some say he was kneeling — he rattled off a further series of insults, then, getting up, he wiped the tears from his face and announced that he was going to speak with Pérez [Real’s president] and Sánchez [a director] because they would be able to find the mole. He promised reprisals and also made an analogy between martial law and football: “If I’m in Vietnam and I see you laugh at a mate, I’d grab a gun with my own hands and kill you. Now it’s you yourselves who have to look for the one that leaked the line-up.”

For everyone present it was difficult to work out if what they had seen was a real loss of emotional control or a piece of spontaneous theatre. By improvisation or calculation, Mourinho had ensured that everyone had been on edge. The team had been emotionally stirred up and he had adjusted the final details of his grand tactical plan. All his work, all his energy, the planning of more than nine months, were now focused on one goal: to reach a state of ecstasy in the final of the Copa del Rey in Valencia on 20 April.

The days were filled with impassioned talk until finally 20 April arrived. He talked about politics, about nationalism, about the inexorable division between the Castilian and Catalan peoples. He told the players that they had nothing in common with Barça. He knew, he said, because he had lived in Barcelona for many years, and was well aware of the local culture and the education that Catalan children receive. He explained that people like Puyol, Busquets, Xavi and Piqué had been taught from childhood to distance themselves from Spaniards such as Casillas, Ramos and Arbeloa.

He insisted that his players were wrong if they thought they had made friendships with the Barça players over their years together in the Spanish national team. The Barça players were not their friends because they took advantage of this supposed friendship by betraying the Madrid players, trying to snatch their prestige from them through their manipulation of the press.

They, the Madrid players, were not to participate in this charade any more. They must accept their role as bad guys and should refuse to acknowledge their rivals. Mourinho warned his players that if he saw any of them shaking hands outside of the formalities of the game they would be turning their backs on him — and on their team-mates. Anyone making any such friendly gesture towards the opposition ran the risk of becoming something very much like a traitor.

• The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho by Diego Torres, translated by Pete Jenson (published by HarperSport on April 10 for £12.99). To order for £10.99 including free postage visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call The Times Bookshop on 0845 2712134

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/article4055969.ece

[darrus 422]

God, this Diego Torres guy is still obsessed with Mourinho... Really, if he was a woman I'd think he'd made some advances on Jose, been told to f*ck off and can't let it go ever since, but he obviously is a man, so - it's hard to imagine a reason for all this obsession and all the lies he's spouted all the time and looks like still keeps spouting the year after Mourinho left Madrid.

The man is ill and needs help.

[The Chels 2,502]

God, this Diego Torres guy is still obsessed with Mourinho... Really, if he was a woman I'd think he'd made some advances on Jose, been told to f*ck off and can't let it go ever since, but he obviously is a man, so - it's hard to imagine a reason for all this obsession and all the lies he's spouted all the time and looks like still keeps spouting the year after Mourinho left Madrid.

The man is ill and needs help.

I think he was the (only) journalist who said Mourinho cried at not getting the United job. He likes to spout shit but still an interesting read lol!

[darrus 422]

I think he was the (only) journalist who said Mourinho cried at not getting the United job. He likes to spout shit but still an interesting read lol!

It was probably funny the first year but got old fast. I mean, for real, did Mourinho kill his puppy or stole his lover or something? How many times was Torres proven to be lying, and he still is going on and on and on.

Though he's from "El Pais", right?

[The Chels 2,502]

It was probably funny the first year but got old fast. I mean, for real, did Mourinho kill his puppy or stole his lover or something? How many times was Torres proven to be lying, and he still is going on and on and on.

Though he's from "El Pais", right?

Not sure about his history - what else has he lied about? The Guardian (one of the most reputable UK newspapers) says Diego Torres is a "respected Spanish journalist", surprisingly!

[darrus 422]

Not sure about his history - what else has he lied about? The Guardian (one of the most reputable UK newspapers) says Diego Torres is a "respected Spanish journalist", surprisingly!

He was writing and saying a lot of things about Real Madrid, some players and Mourinho in particular that were either proven untrue or came out to be a complete lies later. Mostly just reports about some events - players fighting, Real staff having a fight with journalists etc that turned out to be very colorful and far-from-reality interpretations of things you could see watching videos of said events. I remember he invented some story with Benzema's car (he never owned such car), wrote about Mourinho hitting translator in press conference and offending him (Mourinho shook hands with the translator and said 'thank you'), Mourinho being at war with Marcelo and not calling him up (Marcelo was injured) and so on. I also remember last year other journalist in some tv show called him a lier in his face, and one of the players (Arbeloa?) saying something about never imagining that it's possible to write so many lies in such a short text about one of his articles.

"El Pais" is considered anti-Madrid so it generally is to be expected, but Torres has such imagination that even if he says that 2x2=4 you'd better not take it as certain thing. He's a good fiction writer, and if he wrote fiction books he'd be amazing. Problem is he's writing about real people twisting a lot of things along the way.

About the passage you quoted - it was an article in 2011, and there was a lot of indignation about it because Granero was not in the dressing room while (if) the scene described by Torres happened so Real fans mostly laughed it off.

I also remember some inconsistencies with the "cried about MU" part - some people were posting links to photos showing some of the things as lies, but by that time I wasn't paying much attention.

[bushman 2,043]

Jose & still our famous Jose. What´s there to say about him?

Whatever is said in public, the message in the Chelsea locker room is rather different, I hope.

Hopefully, Jose has got a clear message for tomorrow´s encounter.

Today, we read Jose thinks Tuesday´s task as " almost the impossible job."

Personally, I only laugh at his remarks. We all know & hope, Chelsea can come back & send these Parisians fishing.

Tomorrow night, at a packed Stamford Bridge, one of Jose´s special nights, I still believe.

[Namika 922]

Diego Torres was working on Real Madrid TV in 2009 under Ramon Calderon but he was fired as soon as Perez became president. Since then he hates him and he criticise him and his decisions (José appointemnent) whenever he can. He really started to hate Mourinho when José joked about him in a press conference.

[FabHazard 655]

When things go badly, he blames the players' - Cruyff slams Mourinho attitude

Former Barcelona and Netherlands star Johan Cruyff has hit out at Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho for his attitude towards his own players.

The Blues boss has repeatedly stated his side cannot be considered among the Premier League title challengers this season - despite sitting second in the table - and branded his players' defending as "ridiculous" following the 3-1 Champions League quarter-final first-leg defeat to Paris Saint-Germain.

Cruyff has slammed the Portuguese for his focus on short-term results at the expense of squad harmony and claims he will quickly lose the support of the dressing room at Stamford Bridge - just as he did at Real Madrid.

"PSG have a strong team with some great players. Chelsea have some great players as well, but Mourinho seems to disagree," he told De Telegraaf.

"It's always the same with him. When things are going well, it's the result of his good work, but the players are to blame when things are going badly. He already lost the dressing room at Real Madrid because of that and I can see the same happen at Chelsea.

"The problem with Mourinho is that he only cares about results. The result is more important than his players. He always thinks short-term and that's simply not my thing."

Chelsea take on PSG in the second leg of their Champions League tie at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday.

[Special Juan 27,092]

Ah Mr Cruyff....Never too far away when he wants to stick the knife with all things Chelsea and Jose.

He's still smarting after we keep dumping his beloved Barcelona out of Europe....Does us a favour Cruyff.......shut the fuck up.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

Jose likes to talk...it turns attention to him and not the squad. But sometimes he realy makes Chelsea look stupid. As for now, he has to show his real achievements. He spent over 80mio and we are still 3rd. Do the talking on the pitch.

[Special Juan 27,092]

Jose likes to talk...it turns attention to him and not the squad. But sometimes he realy makes Chelsea look stupid. As for now, he has to show his real achievements. He spent over 80mio and we are still 3rd. Do the talking on the pitch.

3rd?

[Namika 922]

Yeah, blame José.