The latest France Football has a picture of José Mourinho on the cover and a headline of “L’Emmerdeur” that, to be kind, is a way of describing the Chelsea manager as a pain in the neck. In a more literal translation – and the compliment is repeated inside in the form of “l’emmerdeur professionnel” – the most respected football magazine in France has just renamed the Special One as “the Shit Stirrer”.Welcome to Paris, José. Mourinho recalled: “I know the PSG project well because when they started this project, with the owner, the president and Leonardo, I was to be the coach. I met them in Qatar but I was with Real Madrid and it was a big challenge to compete directly against Barcelona, probably the best team in Europe for the last decade. It was not the right moment for me.”
It was clear, though, that he had been tempted and the thought did occur that PSG might have made a better fist of the Champions League if they had managed to recruit a manager who, to use a slightly more respectful line from France Football’s coverage (with a heavy PSG slant), makes “your fingers tremble just writing his name”.
“The project was to start dominating in France and to dominate in Europe,” Mourinho explained. “The domination in France is there. They are: champions, champions, champions. They are in the league cup final, the quarter-finals of the French Cup and two points behind the leaders, so the domination of France is there. And, to be fair, you look at the last two seasons in the Champions League and they lost in the quarter-finals, narrowly, to Barcelona, and last season against us, in the last seconds. So they are there. Paris is a big team with big ambitions.”
Mourinho just has to think back to what happened here last season, when his team were beaten 3-1, to be reminded what a team featuring Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi can be capable of. That game had finished with Mourinho complaining he did not have any “real strikers” in a diatribe that strayed dangerously close to making a scapegoat of Fernando Torres. Chelsea won the return leg 2-0 and the drama of that night was made all the more remarkable by the fact it was Demba Ba, one of the forgotten men, who sent Mourinho on one of his touchline dashes.
Ten months on Chelsea have Diego Costa and will surely be stronger for it even if Mourinho made the point his leading scorer might not be entirely sharp on his return from a three-match suspension. “A long rest is not good for him. I don’t think it’s good for him or any player. A little rest is welcome for everyone; a big rest isn’t good for the players. So we are not going to see the best Diego.”
Mourinho also revealed Cesc Fàbregas had been suffering from a bug while Oscar and Willian were still feeling slight injuries. These seemed relatively minor issues when Laurent Blanc was reflecting on the fallout of “a catastrophe at the weekend”.
That was the 2-2 draw against Caen when PSG lost four players to injury, blowing a two-goal lead and ending the game with nine players. Serge Aurier, Yohan Cabaye and Lucas Moura are definite absentees, with doubts surrounding Javier Pastore, Marquinhos, Thiago Motta, Maxwell and Blaise Matuidi.
Not all of these players would have started against Chelsea but it is still a bad time for an injury pile-up and there is no doubt the mood inside the PSG camp felt slightly downbeat. David Luiz reflected that the crowd at Parc des Princes had seemed “asleep” recently.
Blanc was prickly with the local media and, taking a risk, he also said he was not entirely happy with Ibrahimovic celebrating his goal on Saturday by removing his shirt, trying to raise awareness for the World Food Programme, and showing a number of removable tattoos bearing the names of people suffering from hunger.
“It was good to promote the association but it did cost us a yellow card,” Blanc said. “He scored very early. Imagine if he’d got another yellow card after 20 minutes. We may as well have abandoned the game in the 70th minute because we would have been down to seven men [bar the goalkeeper]. It was a good initiative but I don’t know whether him taking his shirt off was good for us.”
It was unusual to hear one of the superstars of the sport being given a public dressing-down but that booking means Ibrahimovic will be suspended from a Ligue 1 fixture against Monaco; manager has told player he does not want it to happen again.
As for “L’Emmerdeur”, we will have to see whether Mourinho lives up to Blanc’s prediction that he will find a way to “raise the temperature”. Blanc’s message to his players was to ignore any provocation and be “cold, calm. They mustn’t react, even when it is hot out there.” It sounded suspiciously as if he might be talking about Costa, playing his first game in three weeks and eager no doubt to make up for lost time.
By Daniel Taylor, Guardian
