The Chelsea manager delivered the damning verdict on the ambition of his squad who, after strolling to the Premier League title past year, have taken eight points from seven games this season.
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“Football is about today”.
‘It’s hard to win every season but you can be a serial champion in your approach and attitude.
“To be a victor you don’t need to win all the time, but to be a victor you must have a strong mentality every game, every day”. There can be a moment where I will look to the kids and say: ‘Let’s go, non-stop.’ I am ruthless.
Costa was given a three-game ban by the FA for violent conduct, after an incident with Laurent Koscielny in Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Arsenal on September 19.
He said: “There are two sorts of champions”.
With Diego Costa likely to start for Chelsea, Falcao could sit out on the bench against his former team with whom he had scored 41 goals in 51 games. He was angry when the conversation started but his tone changed as Xavi, one of his oldest friends in football, told him that both sides needed to think about the way they were behaving.
“It’s very unfair what has happened to him”.
Mourinho later admitted that the first-half performance at St James’ Park was Chelsea’s worst under his management, rating his players as “minus one“.
“We’re not babies. It has to come from us”, Fabregas added. But we’re not performing in a continuous way, that’s our problem. The Portuguese manager wasn’t satisfied with the performance of Blues and he was certainly concerned with the exhibition of poor defensive skills for the hundredth time this season.
Asked whether there were any similarities between the pair, Lopetegui said: “I’m not going to answer that, other than to say Mr Mourinho is a wonderful coach and did great things at Porto”.
It was at Porto that Mourinho achieved perhaps the greatest feat of his career, when leading the Portuguese side to the Champions League title in 2005. In truth, for all their fight, the Israeli double-winners rarely threatened the Premier League champions.
Reward is a statue of Mourinho in the club’s museum and he visited it last night. Maybe it is mental, something inside you, but this team works well.
“You realise that you did something important, something time will not delete”. I have respect, but we want to win tomorrow. “No more questions about it”.
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But their opening 4-0 Group G victory over Maccabi Tel-Aviv shows Lopetegui of the danger posed by Jose Mourinho’s side on the Blues boss’ return to Estadio do Dragao. “They are a big side and want to win but Porto know they will not face a weak team”.
