There is a chance that, by the close of play against
Manchester City,
José Mourinho may be reminded about the scathing words he reserved for
West Ham's conservatism at Chelsea
last week. His own tactics hardly bordered on the adventurous at
Manchester United and Arsenal earlier in the season, and when it comes
to parking the bus it could be said Mourinho slipped on the handbrake
then threw the keys down the nearest drain when his
Internazionale team ventured to Barcelona for the second leg of their 2010 Champions League semi-final.
The allegation of possible double standards was gently pointed out before his
Chelsea team set off for Manchester and, naturally, there was a look of disdain attached to the response.
"I
took Barcelona by winning 3-1," Mourinho said, recalling the first leg
of that semi-final at San Siro. "But it should have been four or five.
Inter played the best game of the last 50 years. We went to attack them.
We knew we played the first game at home, and the second would be very
difficult.
"We knew we had no chance if we didn't win at home. So
we went with everything we had and we won 3-1. In the second game, when
you start 3-1 up and stay there with 10 men [Thiago Motta was sent off
after 27 minutes], you put the aeroplane in front of the goal." Inter
flew away with a 3-2 aggregate win.
What can be said with absolute
certainty is that City's default setting is to go for the opposition. A
team with 72 goals from 18 home games cannot be expected to do anything
else.
"We play with two strikers, and we have two wingers who are
virtually strikers," Vincent Kompany explained in an interview with
ESPN a few days ago. "One of our midfield players – and we have only two
– is also virtually a striker. Our full-backs are pushing up all the
time so, ultimately, out of a team of 11 players we have six or seven
always involved in the attack."
City have scored 115 times this
season and are near-certainties to beat the top-division record set by
Manchester United in 1956-57 of 143 in all competitions. If they were to
beat Chelsea and do the same to Norwich on Saturday – a side they have
already put seven past this season – it would also mean United being
closer in points to the relegation zone than top spot when they face
Fulham on Sunday.
Yet it is not United who concern City. After the Chelsea game, the next six opponents for
Manuel Pellegrini's
team are Norwich (15th), Sunderland (14th), Stoke (11th), Aston Villa
(10th), Hull (13th) and Fulham (20th). This is City's chance to
establish a position of command before playing at Old Trafford and
Arsenal in the space of five days at the end of March.
Mourinho
has certainly been trying to get under City's skin. He is very clever in
the way he does it, too, mostly because he has so much experience of
it. Lots of compliments and almost startled innocence when he is asked
why he fell out with Pellegrini in Spain, but enough throwaway lines
here and there to manipulate the headlines and be noticed.
Everybody
knew which team would immediately be implicated when he talked, without
naming names, about clubs with a "dodgy" perception of the financial
fair-play rules (clue: not Paris St-Germain this time) and there was a
personal edge when he brought up, unsolicited,
Pellegrini's
error of not realising another goal against Bayern Munich would have
meant City winning their Champions League group.
"The first
thing to be successful in Europe is to know the rules of the
competition, that's the first thing," the two-times Champions League
winner helpfully volunteered.
On Pellegrini's part, there has been
a look of weary, seen-it-all-before indifference. Some managers prefer
to be self-contained, and City's is better described as vacuum-packed.
"I never comment on anything Mourinho says," he says.
Mourinho,
passing around flutes of champagne and clinking glasses at one recent
press conference, is an entirely different beast. What stands out most
of all is the sense of grievance he has towards City because of the
acclaim they receive. More than once, he has taken exception to it and
referred back to the hostilities that accompanied his title wins for
Chelsea, in line with Roman Abramovich's rebuilding of the club.
"In
my time we were accused of buying the title, no? Because our owner was
Mr Abramovich, just arrived in the country. Maybe now people see City in
a different way. I don't know. And I don't care. I don't envy the fact
that they have this kind of protection, or whichever word it is."
He
did follow that up by explaining that maybe super-rich owners were no
longer a novelty, but it was all wrapped in the same accusation that
Chelsea were taking FFP seriously – so why could others not?
Asked
if Chelsea could compete with City, he said: "If they want to make it
impossible, yes it's impossible. Because we are not competing outside of
what is important for us: the fair FFP. We are working, thinking and
believing that FFP is going to be in practice. So there are things that
are impossible for us.
"Financially, no [we can't compete]. Back
then [his first spell at the club] it was a free world. There was no
FFP. If your club was a rich one, your owner a rich one, there were no
rules. It was an open situation."
His evidence includes the
declaration that Chelsea cannot take on City for the signing of Eliaquim
Mangala, the 22-year-old France international centre-half who will be
available from Porto in the summer. Jorge Mendes, Mourinho's own agent,
is involved in finding Mangala a club, but the price tag is around £37m.
"We
can't," Mourinho said. "We signed [Kurt] Zouma, who is even younger and
a comparable figure. We have the central defender of the Brazil
national team [David Luiz], the centre-half of the English national team
[Gary Cahill], and the best central defender in the
Premier League 2013-14 [John Terry]. So we're fine."
Rewind
there. The best central defender in the Premier League? "I was not
expecting it," Mourinho admitted. "Not after the season he had last
year. I was not expecting it. I would like to see him playing this way
until the end of the season." And the World Cup? "The World Cup is with
him and Roy [Hodgson], not with me."
Mourinho was asked which
players had impressed him the most for City. "The two midfield players
have always played well, so [Yaya] Touré and Fernandinho. I think the
third striker is very, very good. [Edin] Dzeko, every time he plays,
plays very, very well. The wingers are good, the full-backs … they're
complete, they have everything."
Someone asked whether opposition
teams were scared of attacking City and he interrupted the question.
"But I don't know if they don't [attack] or if they can't [attack].
Maybe they can't. I want to attack them. I can tell you that. But after
10 minutes, people might say I'm not attacking. If I don't, it's because
I can't."
He continued: "I don't think a lot about them, to be
fair. I'm not going to build my team because they are very good at this
or that, or bad at this or that. In this moment, Chelsea are going in
one direction. Are we going to play with one striker? Yes. We are not
going to play without a striker. Are we going to play with three central
defenders because they have two fantastic strikers? No. I want to play
with two. I think more about us than them."
His team, though, are
in a game of catch-up. "A bit more time. A little bit more players. Just
a little bit." City, he readily admits, have to be considered
favourites, both short- and long-term.
A LEGACY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
