Jose Mourinho embraced controversy once again after his Chelsea side’s 2-0 Champions League victory over Werder Bremen on Tuesday, suggesting that there was more to the four bookings his side collected than simply a referee keen to crack down on technical offences.
Chelsea’s victory had seemed routine, Michael Ballack’s second-half penalty stifling a Werder fightback after Michael Essien had given the Premiership champions a first-half lead, but Mourinho was upset that John Terry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Didier Drogba all ended up with yellow cards.
”I don’t want to speak about this, because I spoke lots over the last three years.
”But the reality, when you look, is Barcelona have no yellow cards, Bayern Munich one yellow card, Liverpool no yellow cards, Valencia one yellow card, Roma one yellow card, Chelsea four yellow cards.
”Do you think it is violence? No.”
Valencia actually had two booked — and Internazionale four away at Sporting — but Mourinho clearly fears one of the four will be booked against Levski in a fortnight, and so be suspended for the match against Barcelona two weeks after that.
”The difference between an easy group and a difficult group is that in an easy group you don’t get yellow cards because the game is soft; the game is not with pressure,” he went on.
”In big matches it’s tight, and you get more yellow cards.
”Players like Terry and Lampard don’t get yellow cards in England and they go to European football and they have a lot of cards.” — Sapa-dpa