José Mourinho made a special appearance on the podcast of his former Chelsea player John Obi Mikel this week, granting the retired Nigerian a rare and detailed interview looking back on his career.
Naturally, the early stages of the conversation focused on the pair’s time together at Stamford Bridge, where Mourinho spent his first spell outside Portugal between 2004-2007 and enjoyed great success in the Premier League.
Asked why his Blues team, which won back-to-back English titles in 2005 and 2006, as well as two League Cups and an FA Cup in 2007, was so successful, the Portuguese spoke about the mentality of the players in the side.
“It was everything together,” he began. “First of all, Abramovich money. Because every time we speak about the best teams, we are speaking about money too. What Man City is now, what Liverpool is now, what Chelsea still is – but they’re not as good as we were.
“In our time we had the best. We had good coaches, good players. We could choose players based on character and personality. I did a lot to have players like Essien and Drogba, who were not known at the highest level in England. There were others with bigger names or status. But something we at Chelsea always talked about was not just the quality of the players, but the mental profile, the social profile.
"Training sessions were like matches"
“And that team won what we won. We could have won much more. When I left, they kept winning for many years basically with the same people. It was a fantastic team but a fantastic group of guys as well.
“Training sessions were matches. I think nowadays, one of the problems we feel is that players now look at a training session as a training session. In our time there, we looked at training sessions as a moment to compete.
“My best team? I cannot say that because I won so much with other clubs. At Chelsea I was not lucky enough to win a Champions League which we could. We lost a Champions League semi-final with a goal that was not a goal. With goal-line technology we would be in that final and probably win the final.
“So, I was never lucky in the sense of winning the Champions League. But it was one of the top teams. One of the teams where I was feeling in my natural habitat. We shared a lot of principles. Things I like, they liked. Things I dislike, they disliked. We were very much together.”
Adapting to modern players
Critics often speculate as to why Mourinho appeared to struggle with replicating such a strong bond with his players at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in recent years. The notion of players being more sensitive to criticism has been floated, with Mourinho suggesting he has been forced to change his approach when dealing with underperforming stars.
“One of the things that I feel now, is that if I’m exactly the same as I was with that [Chelsea] dressing room, my guys now couldn’t play,” he said. “I remember half times where I destroyed everything, tables flying in the air. I knew those animals would come out second half and kill everybody.
“You can only do it with a certain type of personality. With other guys, if you go the same way in the second half, they don’t want the ball, they hid behind each other. In that team the experienced players had that profile and the kids coming up were always going to grow up with that profile.
“So I was not a nice guy at half times. At Stamford Bridge, every match we arrived at half time not winning, I would be mad. If we go to half time winning 1-0, winning 2-1, I would be mad. I was almost demanding that at half time should be a two-goal difference.”
By @SeanGillen9
