Jose Mourinho talks to Gary Neville
“I felt during part of last season that the country wanted Liverpool to be champion,” he starts out. “The media, the press: a lot was to put Liverpool there. Nobody was saying they were in a privileged situation because they didn’t play Champions League. Nobody was speaking about a lot, a lot of decisions that helped them win important and crucial points. And I felt that day was a day that was ready for their celebration.
“I used the word with my players. I said – we are going to be the clowns, they want us to be the clowns in the circus. The circus is here. Liverpool are to be champions.”
I interject: “You weren’t having that, were you?”
He fixes with me with a look: “No.”
On the longevity issue, I wonder what his response would be if Chelsea offered him a six-year contract extension. “I sign tomorrow. That’s what I want,” he says. “I want to stay in Chelsea and English football because I think I won the right. My wife says many times I won the right to stop when I want. She says I won enough, I did enough, I created a good situation for the family. She says I won the right to do what I want. Unfortunately Chelsea’s not my club. I depend on the club and I depend on the results.”
“You tell me. If we keep this team, and they keep that team: in five years time, who is going to be better?
“I say immediately – us, because in five years I’m going to have Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Azpilicueta(
), Zouma, in the best moment of their careers, and the fantastic players I have now, at 28, 29. A fantastic team with lots of solutions.”
(აზარზე)
Mourinho starts out: “I don’t know if you agree with me, but the profile of the ‘man player’ you found in football 15 years ago is different to the majority of the players you found at the end of your career. They are different kids. I think Eden is out of context at this moment. Why? Because he’s a fantastic kid. He is humble, very humble. Very nice. Very polite. Selfish – zero. Egocentric – zero. He is fantastic.
“I had a conversation with his father. His father told me something that I loved. I don’t think it’s a problem to tell you. He said – ‘I have a wonderful son. He is a wonderful father. He is a wonderful husband. I want him to change, because I want him to be a wonderful player. But I don’t want him to change a lot. I don’t want him to become – and he used the name of two or three players. I just want him to be the same husband, the same father, the same son, with a little but more tenacity, mental aggression, ambition, personal ego. A little bit more. And you are the guy to give it to him.’
“We can never transform these fantastic players and men into a competitive animal, a competitive machine. Not even his father wants [that]. We have just to bring him to a different level, working hard in training, which he’s doing.”
Is Hazard responding to that message?
“Yes, yes, yes. He’s never afraid to play and take responsibility. But it’s not about that. It’s about him saying – today, I have to be decisive. What he says in that press interview, when he says ‘I’m not one of the five top players in the world’ – he can be, but he cannot be in a match where he doesn’t do something in the 90 minutes that makes him decisive.
“The week before against Arsenal, I was on him every day – be decisive. Don’t be happy with doing nice things. Don’t be happy being up and down in the game. You have to do something in the game that wins the game for us. And he did. This is the point with Eden. The talent is amazing, and the human side of him – especially in the modern days, because I work with top players for 30 years – he is not from these times. He’s from the old times.”
A common belief is that Mourinho can’t abide players – wingers especially – not tracking back. It is more complicated than that, he maintains: “I had some guys in my career – they didn’t want to [defend]. You try to build something behind them to protect. His [Hazard’s] problem is not that. He wants. The only problem is to be focused during the 90 minutes and understand when he has to, and when he doesn’t have to.
“I always say to him – you look to the situation. Sometimes you don’t need to [track back]. And you have to learn to read the game to know when you don’t have to. For example, if Matic is completely closed on the left side, and just behind him, I don’t want him to come. I want Matic to cope with the situation. I love to work with him. I love the kid. He will always have my support. He knows my nature. Our relationship is at a point where I can tell him anything. He knows I like him a lot. We are fine because of that.”
“When I did it came the [question]: where do you like more, where are you happier? Which is the biggest challenge? I made the choice.
“I keep saying the same. In every club I was working and thinking about that club, but I always have my next movement. This is the first time where I don’t have my next movement. I want to stay. I want to stay till the moment Chelsea tells me it’s over, because the results are not good, or they want to go in another direction, or they don’t agree with my style of management – for any reason. This period at Chelsea is going to hang by their decision, not my decision.”
“For example, [Juan] Mata to Man Utd. We are losing a very good player to a direct opponent. Would this have happened 10 years ago? Maybe not. But in the modern football and the new economic reality [for Chelsea], if Man Utd pays you an important amount of money he has to go. It is my club’s vision. It’s my boss, Mr Abramovich, the board. And I share it. I’m not the sort of manager that says – no, not to Man Utd. Sell Mata to Juventus or Barcelona but not Man Utd. Chelsea cannot have 20 replicas. I cannot have Fabregas and another Fabregas getting the same salary. If he can’t play I can adapt and put Oscar, say, here.”
At his own elite level, he offers a fascinating summary of how he thinks on his feet, adapts, considers the evidence: “I am not fundamentalist in football. What I mean is that in football you have your ideas, you die with your ideas. No.” He is very animated now. “People ask me: what is your model of play? I say: model of what?” He winces when he says it.
“Model of play against who? When? With which players? Model of play what [scrunching his face]?
“I cannot answer to that. Am I too stupid [he lowers his hands to the floor] or am I too smart [raising them to the ceiling]?
“What is that? I don’t know. My model of play is to build from the keeper to Eden Hazard? My model of play is that I have to find where is the weakness of my opponent and where is his strength. Is Diego Costa stronger than this guy [a centre-back]? The model of play. What is that? For me the model of play is the principles I establish with my team as priority principles which give us a certain DNA, but that’s the depth.
“The same thing as ‘a project’. The project has to be flexible. The project is never the same from when we start to when we end. It’s like at my house. You change, I don’t like this door, you change. The windows.
“I prefer my team to press in a low block, but if the opponent prefers to build from the back, and they are fantastic, it gives them huge stability in their game – I’m going to press there. Liverpool wanted to play with Suarez behind the defenders, Sterling the same thing, and Steven Gerrard in front of the defenders. So I go there, I play Lampard on Stevie G, I play my block completely low. I win. And I’m criticised because I [am not allowed to] play that way. So I am the stupid one. I’m not fundamentalist. And I think some people in football are becoming a bit fundamentalist.”
“This team is not there. We are more artistic, I believe. We have better control of the game by having the ball, and by knowing how to move between players – the circulation of the ball.
“This team has more [potential] to be admired by good results but also for a certain style of play. In that team I had guys like Makelele. He knew everything about that [toughness]. These guys are still in that learning process. I think we are going in a very good direction. People like [Arjen] Robben, [Damien] Duff, even Joe [Cole] in his two great seasons with me were people with appetite to kill matches, to finish.
“You don’t see Duff dribbling without a shot. You don’t see Robben attack the space without getting a penalty or shooting. We have some guys still in the line between the artistic side and the objective side. We need to kill more matches.”
So will they, and be champions this season? “Sometimes I think it's part of the players’ DNA. Things that you cannot give to the players. But as a coach I always feel I have the quality to interfere. I can help, I can change. So I try.
“For example, Willian. Willian does fantastic work with the ball and without the ball. I say to him: ‘You have to finish a game of 90 minutes with three shots. It’s not possible you play 90 minutes in the position you play without three shots. Three shots, two assists. It’s such amazing work you do for the team, in the build-up, in the defensive transition. You do such amazing work for the team, but with a little bit of this and a little bit of that you’ll be fantastic.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/...aving-that.htmlწაიკითხეთ, კარგი ინტერვიუა.
J-Wall.
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ჩელსი, BLUE TILL I DIE vol.81
