Jose Mourinho never spoke a truer word than when he claimed, after Chelsea’s exit from the Champions League in Barcelona, that at the highest level of football details can make a big difference.
What he meant — and he reiterated the view in his programme notes at the weekend — was that the detail of Asier del Horno being incorrectly sent off in the first leg had handicapped Chelsea unfairly and effectively cost them the tie. Such a selective memory largely explains why a coach universally admired at the start of the season is now so unpopular across Europe.
Like all unreasonable men — and Mourinho is already being nicknamed Napoleon — the Chelsea coach thinks he is right and the world is wrong. This philosophy has served many successful managers well, and football has been all the more entertaining for it, but it needs adapting in defeat or it sounds terribly similar to whingeing.
If Mourinho wants to know why his aura of cool has evaporated in recent months to be replaced by blunt accusations that he and his team lack class, he need only remember his own words. Football sees the whole picture, not just his edited version, and the devil is in the detail. Here are some of the details Mourinho appears to have overlooked:
- Del Horno was not sent off because of some eccentric whim of the referee; he was shown a red card for one of the most blatant fouls of the season on a particularly talented opponent in Lionel Messi. To hear Mourinho talk you would think they were innocent victims of conspiracy.
- Barcelona came within a minute of beating Chelsea’s 11 men at Nou Camp. The fact they didn’t was down to an extremely generous penalty given for a non-existent foul.
- Frank Rikjaard did not moan too much about that, nor did he make a meal of defeat at Stamford Bridge last season when Chelsea’s winner was clearly shown to have stemmed from an illegal block that the referee missed. That’s the way football goes, sometimes you don’t get the breaks.
- Mourinho cannot mention Liverpool without referring to the goal they never scored, the debatable strike by Luis Garcia that knocked them out of the Champions League at the semifinal stage last season. What he never makes clear is whether he would have preferred the alternative: a penalty to Liverpool, Petr Cech sent off, and 86 minutes still to play.
- Promising ”goals, goals, goals” before the game, then sending Robert Huth on as an emergency striker for the last 10 minutes in Barcelona hardly counted as inspired.
- Chelsea do not deserve the unsporting reputation with which their coach has saddled them because their players do gracious defeat quite well.
- After bringing his players out late for the second half at West Brom, Mourinho petulantly and pointedly refused to shake Bryan Robson’s hand at the end. This is not the behaviour expected of champions at the home of a more modest club with relegation worries. Chelsea’s complete lack of class is starting to embarrass their own fans. ”Gamesmanship is one thing,” a discussion in a Barcelona restaurant agreed. ”But childishness does not impress anybody.”
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