The strength of Chelsea’s recent revival faces its first real test when the English champions take on their Portuguese counterparts, FC Porto, on Wednesday.
Jose Mourinho returns to the club he guided to 2003 Uefa Cup and 2004 Champions League triumphs with a Chelsea squad that has put together a run of six successive wins without conceding a goal since they were beaten 2-0 by Liverpool at Anfield at the end of January.
On the back of those performances, Mourinho has done his best to foster a sense that Chelsea have gone through their sticky patch and emerged unscathed on the other side, a belief which, he claimed, led him to rest Claude Makelele and Ricardo Carvalho for Saturday’s FA Cup tie with Norwich.
”Because the team is in a good moment, winning matches, confidence back, I thought I could give some players a rest,” he nonchalantly explained after watching his side win 4-0.
Closer scrutiny of the winning sequence, however, suggests that the ”business-as-usual” rhetoric, if not total bluster, could yet prove to have been premature.
Three of the six victories have been recorded against lower-league opposition — Nottingham Forest and Norwich in the FA Cup and Wycombe in the League Cup, the final of which, against Arsenal, takes place on Sunday.
And although both Middlesbrough and Blackburn have been outclassed in recent league matches at Stamford Bridge, a scrappy 1-0 win at relegation-threatened Charlton will have been accorded equal significance by the rest of Europe’s elite.
Unlike Charlton, Porto are a side in form. A 4-0 hammering of Naval on Friday allowed them to pull four points clear at the top of the Portuguese top flight. And, as Mourinho knows only too well, the Estadio do Dragao is an intimidating venue where English clubs have not prospered in recent seasons.
Manchester United’s 2-1 loss there in the second round in 2004 was arguably the key match in Porto’s successful campaign that season and Mourinho himself suffered defeat by the same margin when he took Chelsea there in the group stages the following season, his first in London.
Arsenal fared only marginally better this season, registering a goalless draw in December to ensure that both sides progressed to the knockout stage.
Having already been back once, Mourinho and his former Porto players, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira, might be hoping that some of the animosity associated with their departure has dissipated.
The manager, however, is resigned to the fact that for a section of the Porto support, his decision to move on to a new challenge will never be one they can understand or accept.
”Those people will give me some nice songs like sometimes I have in England,” he said. ”That’s part of the job. I know the job I did there, I know the history I did in that club and not even whistles or boos can delete the history.”
Chelsea will be encouraged by the return of Michael Ballack from injury following the Germany captain’s recovery from a thigh injury he suffered on international duty earlier in the month.
Mourinho will have to reshuffle his defence, once more having lost Khalid Boulahrouz for several weeks with a dislocated shoulder, but he insists that his injury blighted squad will fly south in confident mood.
”The message I want to give to my players is that they have to be more worried about us than we are about them,” he said. ”This week we have two finals: Porto is like a final and Arsenal is really a final.” — Sapa-AFP