The Nation Backs Liverpool

Liverpool fans can be assured that with the exception of some Manchester United supporters and the Chelsea faithful, the whole country will be rooting for Raffa Benitez and his boys in the Champions League semi-final. Mourinho has made certain of that.

The latest outpourings attributed to the little Portuguese interpreter are extraordinary even by his standards. Apparently he would have us believe that he would have been sacked if he had achieved the kind of results obtained by Benitez (which presumably means he does not value the Champions League and is no longer interested in winning the ultimate European accolade). Evidently he suspects that Liverpool players will be hell bent on getting his Chelsea stars banned for the second leg (evidence, perhaps, of a developing persecution complex). And finally we are invited to believe that Liverpool are hot favourites because they have played hardly any games lately so they have had ample time to prepare, unlike the Blues who are involved with absolutely everything and decimated by injuries.

So what do they call a man who comes out with this sort of trash in the lead-up to an important match? Remarkable though it may seem, there are still people prepared to characterise Mourinho as a ‘breath of fresh air’, a ‘great manager’ and a ‘master of mind games’, but it may safely be assumed that none of them is intelligent – because remarks such as these can only pollute the air, not freshen it; they are not so much ‘mind games’ as mindless games and they are sufficiently insulting to the intelligence of those who work in football as to disqualify the perpetrator from any pretensions to greatness.