I'm two good: Jose Mourinho celebrates after a
victory over AC Milan last month
Inter Milan vs
Chelsea
Wednesday, February 24
2010
Channel 61 Football
Frenzy : 3.45 am (Live) (Thur morning)
Jose Mourinho loves making enemies. He just can't help
himself. And in Italy, he has succeeded beyond his wildest
dreams.
The self-styled Special One has gone out of his way to trash
Italian football, accuse Serie A referees of conspiring to deny his
club the title and turn the entire Italian media machine against
him. As ever, it's Jose v The World.
That animosity will come to a head in a peculiar twist on
Wednesday night when a sizeable proportion of the Italian
population pin their hopes on the possibility that their
countryman, Carlo Ancelotti,
Chelsea's softly-spoken manager, will put Mourinho in
his place.
It matters little that Ancelotti is now in charge of an English
Premier League club playing against the Serie A
champions-elect.
Outside the blue and black half of Milan, the view is that
Italian pride will be better served by seeing Mourinho humbled.
There is no doubt he is public enemy No 1.
Mourinho is regarded as just too corrosive a character in a
league just beginning to recover from the Calciopoli scandal of
2006, where police discovered leading clubs had selected their
'favourite' referees for matches.
Mourinho has no hesitation in exploiting this whenever results
or referees' decisions go against Inter, blaming wholesale
corruption in officialdom for any setbacks, as he did again on
Sunday when two of his players were sent off in a goalless
draw.
'We are not playing against Milan, or Rome or Sampdoria,' he
said. 'We are playing against "other things".' Mourinho accuses the
authorities as if they were 'ostriches, with their heads in the
sand'.
Now the Italian game is fighting back. Sampdoria chief executive
Beppe Marotta said Mourinho 'creates a nasty climate'. Italian
Football Federation vice-president Demetario Albertini accused
Mourinho of 'continually throwing dirt at football'. AC Milan
general manager Adriano Galliani, former president of the Italian
League, went a stage further. 'We cannot continue like this,' he
said. 'Mourinho has to stop. His attitude is tantamount to an
incitement to violence.'
And so Mourinho has been hit with a three-match touchline ban
and £40,000 fine, which is being viewed as the beginning of a long
and acrimonious departure from Serie A for the Portuguese
coach.
A top Italian writer, who deals with the Inter camp daily, said:
'We don't think he will be here next season and we won't be sorry
about that. There are plenty of people around who will drive him to
the airport.'
Even allowing for some opportunistic bandwagon jumping by
Inter's rivals, there is no doubting the widespread contempt
Mourinho's antics inspire.
Guilty: Mourinho mimes that he is in handcuffs in
weekend clash against Sampdoria
On Sunday he threw a kit bag over the roof of the Inter
dug-out, mimed that he was being slapped in handcuffs, doubled up
in sarcastic laughter at some of the officials' decision making and
allegedly confronted the referee in the tunnel.
Inter president Massimo Moratti spent yesterday privately
apologising for his manager and seeking to calm tempers at the
Italian Federation. Moratti enjoys what Mourinho achieves on the
pitch, but finds the accompanying mess an embarrassment.
It is a situation Roman Abramovich will be familiar with.
Although Mourinho's failures in the Champions League and style of
play were said to be the main factors behind the Russian owner's
decision to remove him, according to one of his aides Abramovich
simply decided Mourinho had become 'unmanageable'.
It wasn't me: Inter forward Eto'o
There were too many controversies and too many conflicts
around the club, and those same quarrelsome distractions are now in
danger of running out of control in Milan, where Mourinho is
regarded as a never-ending argument. But, oddly, while he seems
happy to attract as much opprobrium as possible in Italy, Mourinho
has been going out of his way to make diplomatic noises about
Chelsea.
He even fired off a text to Abramovich over the weekend. It
said: 'Do you need extra tickets, a box or a hotel in Milan?'
Mourinho said: 'Whenever I go to London he's available to give
me his support, this time I want to see if he needs something from
me.' So does Abramovich get the red-carpet treatment? 'For
sure,'nodded the Inter boss on Saturday night.
Mourinho went on studiously to avoid any admission the game is
an opportunity for revenge on the club that dumped him
two-and-a-half years ago.
'No, there would be no special pleasure,' he said with a
straight face. 'I think it's the same for them if they knock me
out.'
Having highlighted Chelsea's lack of trophies since his
departure and Abramovich's 'grave mistakes' in appointing the likes
of Avram Grant since, Mourinho would still have us imagine tomorrow
night is little more than another day at the office.
'I'm not especially excited, I promise you,' he says. 'I view it
with the same amount of emotion and without any extra nerves or
motivation. That's how it is.'
And, no, I don't believe a word of that either. Chelsea
have pursued the Champions League for seven years under Abramovich,
but the pursuit is nothing measured against Inter's 45-year hunt
for Europe's top prize.
It is their Holy Grail. Winning Serie A again will not insulate
Mourinho from the consequences of his continual feuding. Inter have
won four titles in a row and take it almost for granted that any
manager they appoint will claim a fifth successive Scudetto.
But lose again in Europe, as Mourinho did against Manchester
United last season, and he will leave Milan a qualified
failure.
He is not expected to stay. If Italian football holds Mourinho
in contempt, the feeling is undoubtedly mutual. And he has his eye
on Real Madrid this summer, rather than a return to the Premier
League.
Mourinho believes he will establish himself as an all-time great
if he wins championships in the continent's three top leagues -
England, Italy and Spain.
He also relishes the chance of usurping Barcelona's dominance,
where he worked as Sir Bobby Robson's assistant and some still
deride him as 'the interpreter'. But first there is a match to be
won.
Does Mourinho think his knowledge of Chelsea gives him an edge?
'I know the Chelsea players very well, but Ancelotti knows Inter.
This is his country, this is the place where he was working all his
life, so he knows everything about us. I don't think I have an
advantage.'
These little vignettes are delivered with the usual array of
pouts and 'you have to believe me' expressions that Mourinho pulls
when he is being charming. H owever the questions about Chelsea are
phrased, however the scenario is put to him, he sticks to an
uncharacteristically diplomatic line.
'If a Chelsea player is happier to beat me than to beat another
manager I will be very sad to hear it,' he says. 'I wouldn't
understand why that would be? 'But I am not sentimental about it. I
will face this match like any other.'
Give that man an Oscar. Mourinho always plays a starring role in
the movie that is running in his head. Of course, he can afford to
say 'this game is not all about me', because he knows full well
that it most certainly is.
