by bigmick » Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:23 am
No Bav the fact that he spent an awful lot of money at Chelsea has never been in dispute. Anyway...
Champions League: Jose Mourinho’s Inter mission
Inter Milan v Manchester United: Inter’s manager explains why his date with old rival Sir Alex Ferguson is so specialIan Hawkey
Jose Mourinho had it all figured out. Even as far as the time his thoughts would take to zip through the synapses of his special brain. “At six o’clock, after the end of the match against Bologna, I started thinking about the game against Manchester United,” Mourinho calculated. “In a few seconds I arrived where I want my mind to take me.”
Which was where? “Which is, ‘We can beat them’.” That was last night. This morning, Mourinho begins his work on the minds of the footballers of Internazionale, gathering them together at Appiano Gentile, their practice centre close to Como, a serene place with a new-age pavilion, all hieroglyphs and white pillars, as its decorative centrepiece.
“This will be the first time I’m going to speak to the players about the United game,” Mourinho continued, outlining his methods, step by step.
What will he say? “I think I will start by saying, ‘We can do it’.” Mourinho is helped by the knowledge that he has done it before. Archived in his memory are the dozen sets of mind games he has played ahead of, and during, contests with United, starting with the upstart confrontations of the young manager of Porto who so riled the manager of Manchester United that Sir Alex Ferguson would not shake his hand, into the tussles for the leadership of the Premiership and the League and FA Cup ties where the two managers’ mutual respect grew during three years of jousting as the matador and bull of English football.
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Mourinho, ever precise, remembers each and every one of those encounters. “I have played 12 times in the last few years against Manchester United, so I know their qualities, I know their players.”
He has always been good at this sort of preamble, giving the impression everything on the field, the training ground, the press conferences has been plotted, planned and rigorously puppeteered. Over the next few days he will carry on the act of knowing soothsayer before Tuesday’s collision between the champions of Italy and England.
Mourinho is bold enough to suggest strongly that he knows the mood of Ferguson approaching the fixture between United and Inter in Milan. “I think Sir Alex must be happy,” said Mourinho about the domestic advantage United hold over the rest of the Premier League and the condition in which he sees Chelsea, a club appointing a part-time care-taker manager in a post Mourinho used to occupy.
“Sir Alex thinks it will be easier for him because over the last few years, his only real opponent was Chelsea,” explained Mourinho. “Chelsea won in 2004-05 and 05-06, finished second in 06-07, 07-08. So for the last five years, they have been a real opponent. So if he thinks Chelsea are no longer the same, Sir Alex must be happy.”
It was left unsaid that if indeed United’s “only real opponent was Chelsea” in the three years after 2004, then Mourinho had been Ferguson’s “only real opponent”. It was not left entirely unsaid that, by implication, a team such as Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool were not “a real opponent”.
Mourinho took the opportunity to recall the occasion when Benitez rested most of his first-choice XI for a Premier League fixture against Fulham three days before Liverpool played Chelsea in a Champions League semi-final, and concluded that “big clubs have to concentrate on more than one trophy”.
That was an aside, a tangential dart at an old enmity - with Liverpool - from a Mourinho clearly excited and intensely focused on renewing his acquaintance with English football, with United and with their manager.
If Mourinho thought Ferguson was happy with Chelsea’s difficulties, then by the same token he must surely be doubly happy in his job, in charge of an Internazionale team who began the weekend with a nine-point lead over their closest pursuers in Serie A?
Not entirely. “I would be happy if Juventus and Milan were going in the same direction as Chelsea. As it is, I’m not so happy because I think Juventus and Milan are moving in the right direction.”
Not that Inter were failing to progress, he added modestly. “I’m happy with the development of the team over the past couple of months. If I compare my team now with the team I had in the group phase, this team is better, it’s more conscious of what it has to do, it’s more comfortable on the pitch, know better what they have to do. Our game-model is much more stable and we want so much to play against Manchester United.”
He has envisaged the opening moments. Whatever his words about thinking only of Bologna, Mourinho took his players, unusually, to practise at the stadium at San Siro, rather than at Appiano Gentile, seven days before the United match. He has imagined vividly the feel on the night. “Cool,” he reckons. “A game to enjoy. Eighty-five thousand in the stadium, I believe, and a great atmosphere. Inter fans are really connecting with the team at the moment, as they did in the Milan derby last Sunday.
“United fans, even if they come with a few thousand, they are enough to make a real noise and enjoy, as they always do. After the Milan derby [Inter won 2-1 last weekend], we were very proud of the game we gave to the world because everybody was watching. With Manchester United, the world will be watching us. We must give them a real game. It’s a big game for the world to enjoy.”
And the next day? Mourinho had that figured out, too: the headlines, the conclusions.
“I can imagine all the world’s press are waiting for the first team to get knocked out. If an English team gets knocked out of the competition, they will smash them. If an Italian team gets knocked out of the Champions League, they will smash them. If Barcelona or Real Madrid go out, the Spanish press will smash them. The reality is we all have to be cool and understand how big is the competition we have to play.”
So, did Mr Cool know the team he would line up? Followers of Inter can guess at eight or nine of the names in his starting XI. First names on the team sheet: the galloping Maicon at right-back and the impressively mature Zlatan Ibrahimovic up front. Mourinho hinted that the steady nurturing back to fitness of the warrior Patrick Vieira, who is often injured, had been timed specifically for Tuesday.
He also rolled out a red carpet for the unlikely figure of Adriano, the Brazilian striker who earlier this season might as well have had the word “wayward” tattooed on his big forearms. For Mourinho, Adriano has become a Lazarus.
“I only see Adriano here at Appiano Gentile, and on the field at San Siro. I see him working very well at both those places. He is never late for training any more. If he carries on like this until the end of the season, I see him becoming a real example for others.
“The change in his attitude is a real comeback. He was a player who had problems and, now, he’s perfect. Others can learn from how he has changed.”
How could he be sure Adriano had reformed? “I’m not his father. I can control his professional life, not his private life.” He said it neither with regret nor resignation. Even Mr Cool cannot control everything.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".