Mere days away from the Champions League final, Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho once again shows why the club should sell tickets to his press conferences by dropping a cornucopia of delightful quotes.
First, he makes an interesting point about the Champions League final vs. the World Cup:
“This game is the most important in the world. It is even bigger than the World Cup because the teams in it are at a higher level than national teams, who can’t buy the best players.
“If you hold it to be important, you have to transmit that to the players.”
Is he right? Does the fact that the World Cup finals are only played once every four years automatically make it more important than the annual Champions League final? Perhaps he's just trying to transmit the importance of this match to any of his players who may already be thinking ahead to the World Cup? Or maybe he's just trying to hype the one even of those two that involves The Special One.
On whether he's more worried about facing Bayern Munich in Madrid on Saturday or the volcano in Iceland, which is still disrupting air travel:
“I am worried about Gudjohnsen.
“I don’t know the name of the volcano, it’s too difficult, so it’s Gudjohnsen [as in his former Chelsea and Iceland striker Eidur Gudjohnsen].
“I’m worried about the volcano, I would like to go Friday but it seems we may have to go tomorrow. I like to work here [in Milan]. That’s my only worry.”
In other words, Jose finds airborne ash more troublesome than Bayern Munich. Mind games!
On the rumors of his seemingly inevitable move to Real Madrid in the offseason:
“It’s not true that I am coach of Real Madrid and after the final I want two or three days for myself to think about my future,” the Portuguese said in his typically abrupt tone.
“Obviously Inter can do nothing more to make me happy, I feel important in this club. It’s a problem of personal satisfaction, of being respected in a footballing country where I have had problems for a couple of years.
“But the final comes first.”
...and then I'm going to Real.
Finally, the Reuters article about the press conference concludes like so:
Some bizarre Portuguese proverbs about throwing sand in people’s eyes followed before he was finally asked what the sprinkling of magic dust was that made him “the Special One” after so much success.
“I pray a lot,” Mourinho said, straight-faced.
Lots of prayer and magic dust in the eyes? Sounds about right.
