\n<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Mourinho called himself \u201cthe biggest one\u201d as he reflected on his record-breaking Chelsea history before his latest Stamford Bridge return. The self-styled \u201cspecial one\u201d is back with Benfica for Tuesday night\u2019s Champions League tie and he repeated another famous old line of his to set the scene.<\/p>\n
Mourinho anticipates no hostility from Chelsea\u2019s supporters as he seeks to ignite his Benfica tenure, having only joined them 11 days ago after his sacking by Fenerbahce at the end of August.<\/p>\n
It has not always been the case when he has gone back to Stamford Bridge, with the nadir coming when he was barracked as the visiting Manchester United manager during an FA Cup defeat in March 2017. Mourinho, who won three Premier League titles for Chelsea across two spells, made the point back then that until another manager won four at the club, then \u201cJudas is No 1\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cChelsea is a winning machine that had in the past two or three years a moment without trophies,\u201d Mourinho said on Monday night, back at the stadium where he gave his original \u2018special one\u2019 press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Chelsea won something before my time and then we start winning and then my team kept winning and then a transformation of new teams, new coaches, more trophies, European trophies, the biggest one and the Champions League. So Chelsea is a winning machine. I am the biggest one until someone wins four.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mourinho has been back to Stamford Bridge with Inter, United and Tottenham; his lone victory in seven attempts came with Inter in 2009-10 en route to winning the Champions League. There was warmth from him as he held court in the stadium\u2019s Drake Suite, which is adorned with giant framed photographs of him celebrating each of his three Premier League titles.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Jos\u00e9 Mourinho said the fracas after a late Chelsea equaliser against his Manchester United side in October 2018 has been misinterpreted.<\/span> Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Mourinho\u2019s family home remains close by in south-west London and he said that his son came every weekend to the ground. He also talked about how the club would be \u201cmy Chelsea before the game and my Chelsea after,\u201d although \u2013 by dint of the terms of engagement \u2013 he stressed it would be \u201cmy Benfica\u201d during it.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve already played here with Tottenham, Man United and Inter Milan,\u201d Mourinho said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 90 minutes, I didn\u2019t think where I was or with who I was playing. So I say: \u2018I am not a blue any more \u2026 I am [Benfica] red now.\u2019 And I want to win.<\/p>\n \u201cBut of course, I will always be a blue. I am part of their history and they are part of my history. I helped them to become a bigger Chelsea and they helped me to become a bigger Jos\u00e9. When I say I am not a blue I hope everybody understands me \u2013 I am speaking about the job that I have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut in relation to these pictures [in the Drake suite] \u2026 there are not many clubs that do this. In many, many clubs it looks like there is a fear of what happened in the past and there is continuous transformation of pictures \u2013 sometimes it looks like they want to delete people that made history in the clubs. I think this shows that Chelsea is really a big club because big clubs are also about principles.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/span><\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Mourinho brushed off any previous acrimony at Stamford Bridge, recalling one episode that he claimed was misinterpreted. It came in October 2018 when his United team conceded a stoppage-time equaliser to the Chelsea of Maurizio Sarri.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen something happened, it was that one member of the Chelsea dugout insulted me,\u201d Mourinho said, meaning Sarri\u2019s coach, Marco Ianni. \u201cI reacted and people thought I was reacting to the Chelsea goal because they scored in the last minute. It was not the case.<\/p>\n \u201cThe coach was Sarri and he was absolutely top in the way he reacted to his assistant. Also, Chelsea was top in the way they dealt with it. And I was also top because Chelsea wanted to sack the guy and I told them no. Not because of something that happened in a football match. Leave the man in peace and on the bench. Everybody can do shit things.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think Chelsea fans boo me [on Tuesday night]. At least on the street, they are the ones that disturb me all the time \u2013 for pictures and autographs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jos\u00e9 Mourinho called himself \u201cthe biggest one\u201d as he reflected on his record-breaking Chelsea history before his latest Stamford Bridge return. The self-styled \u201cspecial one\u201d is back with Benfica for Tuesday night\u2019s Champions League tie and he repeated another famous old line of his to set the scene. Mourinho anticipates no hostility from Chelsea\u2019s supporters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[752,3367,4921,3030,8701,13427,7162],"class_list":{"0":"post-24800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-biggest","9":"tag-chelseas","10":"tag-greatest","11":"tag-jose","12":"tag-manager","13":"tag-mourinho","14":"tag-returning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}