Jose Mourinho is in real trouble now. On March 31, we’ll find out just how much being a bad loser is going to cost his club, Chelsea.
The ultimate sanction? Expulsion from the Champions League, which would be perhaps the most remarkable disciplinary step ever taken by Uefa, who accuse the Chelsea boss of creating ”a poisoned and negative ambience” with his comments after the club’s first leg defeat in Barcelona last month.
As the days tick down towards that disciplinary hearing in Nyon, Switzerland, at the end of the month, even the smooth Portuguese is going to be a sweating a bit.
And it’s not just Mourinho who’s in trouble. The club have been charged with bringing the game into disrepute too, as has Mourinho’s assistant Steve Clarke, who never had this sort of trouble with predecessors Ruud Gullit and Claudio Ranieri.
Blimey, they’ve even put Chelsea’s security man, Les Miles, on the charge sheet, such is the level of outrage in the corridors of Uefa, where the resignation of Swedish referee Anders Frisk after alleged death threats from Chelsea fans has created a real stir.
It all started when Mourinho accused Barcelona boss Frank Rijkaard of talking to Frisk in the referee’s dressing room at the Nou Camp last month.
Mourinho tried the same stunt in the Carling Cup against Manchester United a few weeks before that, suggesting Sir Alex Ferguson had influenced the referee by talking to him at half-time.
But if Mourinho was just trying to create a smokescreen for his side’s defeat in Spain, it didn’t work.
With Frisk and Rijkaard denying any collusion and both sides denying a bottom-kicking incident in the tunnel involving several officials — presumably that’s why Clarke and Miles are on the charge sheet — it all got a bit out of hand.
Even Didier Drogba, the guy controversially sent off by Frisk, is getting a bit jumpy. The Chelsea striker said this week: ”I hope my sending off didn’t cause Mr Frisk’s resignation. We need quality referees.”
Chelsea’s case, of course, isn’t helped by the fact that Combat 18, a well-known British fascist group, have often masqueraded as Blues fans — and apparently they were behind some of the threats made to Frisk, his wife and children.
Their home phone, with a secure number, was used and according to Frisk’s wife, the threats were pretty horrific. Frisk, so shaken he wouldn’t even let his daughter out to check the post box, claims he had no option but to end his whistling career at 42, three years before the required age.
Uefa aren’t going to stand for that. They say of Chelsea’s behaviour: ”They were basically using lies as a pre-match tactic. They were trying to qualify for the next round by putting pressure on referees and officials through false statements.
”They were ready to use disloyal methods and, frankly, this is totally and completely unacceptable.”
Uefa normally couch these things in diplomatic terms. But not this time. Chelsea have compounded matters by sending in a written report containing the allegations to Uefa after the game, and before their dramatic second-leg victory at Stamford Bridge rendered the bleating even more pathetic.
Mourinho claims he personally saw Rijkaard enter Frisk’s room but Uefa officials reckon that’s geographically impossible given the lay-out of the Nou Camp stadium.
Uefa director of communications William Gaillard insists: ”I can categorically state that this alleged meeting did not happen.
”There is a clear contradiction in Chelsea’s complaint. They say Clarke and Miles saw the meeting but we know by looking at the architecture that from where they were they could not have seen anything.
”Then Mr Mourinho says in a signed article he says he was the one who saw it.
”What we do know from the reports from the referee and the venue director is that Mr Mourinho came out of the Chelsea dressing room and shouted in a quite aggressive way at Anders Frisk: ‘Can I also come into your dressing room!”’
This is dodgy ground for Chelsea, whose manager also likes to run along touchlines making gestures to fans and revelled in running on the pitch with arms pumping after the second leg triumph over Barca. Remember, he is also embroiled in the Ashley Cole ”tapping up” controversy that could see the club docked Premiership points for approaching the full back in a London hotel while the player is still under contract to Arsenal.
Mourinho was quoted in a football magazine on February 27 saying: ”When I saw Rijkaard entering the referee’s dressing room I couldn’t believe it. When Drogba was sent off I didn’t get surprised.
”There is something that tells me that in London the referee will be Pierluigi Collina, the best in the world. A perfect referee with personality and quality.”
That made Uefa even angrier. Collina’s appointment for the second leg had not even been made public by then and it leaves the whole edifice of the Champions League looking slightly dodgy. Did Frisk cheat? Did Collina correct the balance?
Of course not. They’re just referees trying to cope with the pace and hype of the modern game. The point is Mourinho, Champions League winner with Porto last season, doesn’t know how to lose because it doesn’t happen too often. And now he will pay the price.
Uefa don’t have the balls to throw Chelsea and their billionaire owner Roman Abramovich out of the Champions League at the quarterfinal stage, any more than the FA have the bollocks to dock the Premiership’s runaway leaders points for the Cole affair.
What will happen is this. Mourinho will be banned from the touchline for both legs of the quarterfinal against Bayern Munich, leaving first team coach Baltemar Brito in charge.
Oh, there will be huge fines, no doubt. But Abramovich will pay those with his son’s pocket money.
I’d say this is a small price to pay for Mourinho, given than he has ruined Frisk’s refereeing career and cast a shadow over the Champions League. But in his biography, Mourinho recalls being banished from the touch-line for the second leg of Porto’s Uefa Cup semifinal against Lazio (this time his sin was quite clear, in the previous leg he stopped a Lazio player from taking a quick throw in) and he says of that incident two years ago: ”I cried because I couldn’t be in the war with my men.”
I suspect a few tears will be shed over the next few weeks by Mourinho and Chelsea, but they won’t be real tears. They’ll be tears of contrition, publicly shed.
And Mourinho, shored up by his pay packet and arrogance, will continue to push for silverware in Europe and England.
Will he learn the Rudyard Kipling lesson and accept victory and defeat as equals over the coming months? I doubt it. But in the quiet times after training, when he has time to think, I hope he considers the impact his ridiculous outburst had on Frisk and his family.
Next time you lose Mourinho, let’s see a shaken hand and a buttoned lip. Lots of neutrals want to see Chelsea succeed in Europe and win their first championship in England since 1955. And we want to admire you for more than your Russian boss’s chequebook.