The Only One - Jose Mourinho

Jose Mourinho gave an interview to El Mundo in which he analysed the team's current situation, how he presently feels, and discussed the world of football in general.

"I wanted the season to start. Friendlies bore me, but they must be played. They are necessary evil. We've prepared for this. I'm 48 years old and I feel the youth of maturity rather than the maturity of youth. I hope they don't take that away from me."

"The team is better now. We haven't spent as much on signings as other sides and I think we've done a good job and achieved balance. The squad has benefitted from the experience of working together and sharing life experiences. We've obviously added something to the mix. The team works like it didn't a year ago and it's ready to add to its game principles it laked last season. We're proving this."

"I would be criticised, and rightly so, if Adan suddenly had to come on one day without having had any playing time previously. If I'm suddenly forced to play him in the Champions League, people may criticise me for not ever using him before. But it's not only about that. I'm very interested in Antonio being an option for me. I don't want to have untouchable players on my team. That's not my style. Iker is the main choice, but Real Madrid is what really matters. If the day comes in which Casillas isn't fit to play, the last thing I want is for him to feel he's untouchable. No player or position is untouchable."

"Many lies are said about me, but that's part of the game, of life. Life does this to you. What happens here, as opposed to the other leagues in which I've coached, is more like a campaign. A friend of mine who knows nothing of football told me the other day that he is proud to see the campaign there seems to be against me. It's an uneven fight. He actually said you could build a monument with all the stones people are throwing at me."

"I think the world has gone through a great change. Very few people hold truth or the lack of hypocrisy as a fundemental principle in their lives. That did exist in the time of our grandparents. It was a principle common to all: rich, poor, fortunate, less fortunate... It's not that way today. It's rather the opposite: be a hypocrite, don't say what you think, don't be sincere, don't be honest, survive whatever way you can. Living is not living anymore; it's knowing how to live. I may be wrong, but I'll always say what I think, what I feel, never fearing the consequences. People don't forgive that. I'm never going to change."

"I feel fine, each day farther from questioning why I came to Real Madrid when I felt so well at Inter, or why I didn't leave this summer with the many offers I received. I never think about those things because this is a unique experience. There is no question that Real Madrid is the most important club in the world. I feel satisfied and very excited here. I feel I'm in the right place. I wouldn't change this for anything. Others give the impression of being very Madridistas and turn their back on the club at one moment's notice I'm not here to give anyone any lessons because I arrived here very recently, but I believe I am qualified to speak of 'so-called Madridistas'. Regarding our enemies, those who say the club benefits from favouritism, I challenge them: if I ever benefit from favouritism in a match, let it take place again. I don't want anyone to give us anything, but I don't want them to deprive us of anything either."

"I spent five or six hours at the UEFA headquarters when I took the stand in my appeal, and when I left I felt 10 years younger and much stronger. I said everything, absolutely everything, I wanted to say. It meant a lot to me, and to the world of football, that they took one game away from my suspension. I was right and the result was fantastic."

The France international scored a brace as Madrid went top of La Liga with Cristiano Ronaldo and Gonzalo Higuain also scoring.

And Mourinho feels the 23-year-old deserves the bulk of the praise for the way he led from the front at the Bernabeu, but said Zidane has also been giving him sage advice.

"Benzema deserves full credit for his transformation. He had some help from me, from his teammates and from Zizou, but he deserves the credit," Mourinho told the club's official website.

"Benzema has a fantastic attitude and he always had quality. People see that.

"Then Higuain came on. He had scored with Argentina and played at a high level, scoring a goal of his own. It's just as I said yesterday [Friday]: they are both very good strikers."

However, despite a great performance, the coach feels it could and should have been more.

"We scored four goals, but it could have easly been seven or eight," he added.

"On the other hand, Getafe could have scored three or four strikes of their own. We allowed them to play.

"Getafe were very organised. Standing up I could hear the instructions the players gave each other. They had studied us well and prepared for the match."

Madrid meet Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League on Wednesday.

A day in the life of José Mourinho

05:30 – calls Pedro León’s house using a blocked number to wake him up.

07:00 – frugal breakfast and morning exercises to improve technique on how to keep one’s foot on the head of another as if you wanted to step on him.

08:30 – visits the president of his neighborhood to demand that he throw out the guard and replace him with a Portuguese one recommended by Jorge Mendes.

09:15 – goes to Valdebebas. Runs over two children but an old woman escapes. Swears that he won’t fail tomorrow.

10:00 – uses a Ouija board to meet with the spirits of Hitler, Bin Laden and the bull that killed Manolete to share experiences and get new ideas.

12:00 – the training session begins, with the attendance of his son. During the 15 minutes open to the press, he demands that his players smile.

12:15 – the closed training session includes real fire, like in the Marines. The last minutes are dedicated to learning how to start fights.

13:30 – the players meet in the locker room to repeat a thousand times, “Mou is the best, Mou is the only one who loves us.”

14:00 – the police receive an anonymous call telling them that Pedro León is in reality a dangerous drug trafficker.

14:15 – has a frugal lunch (since evil never rests).

14:30 – video session. Today’s topics: “learn how to torture with the prison guards of Abu Ghraib” and “that’s how we treat journalists in Guantánamo.”

17:00 – on the way home, the Guardia Civil stops him and fines him. Shouts that he will only speak with their director, not with the agents.

18:00 – after slapping his son for paying attention to his friend Jorge and not his father, decides to go to Hipercor to buy some things.

18:15 – falls to his knees in an aisle in Hipercor and starts shouting and crying about how there are no mixed berry-flavored Red Bulls left.

18:55 – leaves Hipercor. Pays with the El Corte Inglés credit card that he stole from Pedro León.

20:00 – gets into a huge fight with his wife after finding out that his son had eaten dinner without his permission.

21:00 – calls Florentino to give him the orders for tomorrow and demand that the Bernabéu change its name to “Mourinho the Great.”

22:30 – goes to bed and reads the book, “The butcher of Milwaukee, a misunderstood hero.”

02:30 – calls Pedro León’s wife using a blocked number, pretending to be one of her husband’s lovers.



A day in the life of Pep Guardiola

06:00 – just like each morning, an angel appears at his window to wake him up by singing “Muntanyes regalades” [a traditional Catalan song] just like Pep taught him.

06:15 – Pep, who sleeps on the floor out of humbleness and solidarity with poor people, gets up and kisses the photos of Gamper, Cruyff and Rafael Casanova.

07:00 – prepares breakfast for his family and the El Raval orphanage with ecological products that he planted himself in his garden.

07:45 – while out jogging, rescues a kitten from a tree and helps a senior citizen to cross the street, while his sweat makes gardens grow flowers.

08:30 – after showering with recycled water, he takes his girls (not Masche and Keita, the other ones) to school, the one that he helped to build with his very own hands.

09:30 – on the way home, calls the Dalai Lama for their daily chat. Then he cleanses his chakras and while he’s at it, the entire house.

11:45 – leaves for the training session. He could levitate there, but he’s so humble that he prefers to go in car like any other normal human being.

12:00 - stops at an ATM to take out money and sees that the bank is being held up. Speaks with the bank robber, and gets him to give up and open an account with Sabadell [the bank that Pep is the image of].

12:30 – it’s all fun and games at the training session, between the players and also their families and the journalists that fill the stands.

13:45 – when the session is over, gives Tito Vilanova a gift of an eye patch, which he personally sewed and embroidered. The journalists break into emotional applause.

14:30 – time for lunch, to which the entire team and all of Barça’s employees are invited. Pep himself cooks and fills up the glasses with his shakes.

16:00 – offers to take Busquets to SOS Racismo (where he collaborates) and Messi to the speech therapist (where… well, he takes him) on his way home.

16:45 – takes advantage of the traffic jam to solve the Hodge conjecture and compose an opera based on the poems of Mandelstam that he personally translated.

18:00 – realizes that he’s the only winner of the Euromillions lottery and decides to donate the 160 million anonymously to the NGO “Humility Without Borders.”

18:15 – after helping his girls (not Masche and Keita, the other ones) with their homework, calls the dog pound to adopt all the animals.

21:00 – family dinner, to which illegal immigrants, as always, are invited. Helps them to find legal work.

22:15 – sends an email to Antonio Miró [a Spanish fashion designer] with the sketches for his next spring-summer collection for bus drivers.

22:30 – videoconference with Obama, Merkel and George Soros to give them his recipe for botifarra amb mongetes and advice on the crisis.

23:55 – goes down to the Batcave to get ready if his city needs him tonight, since he knows very well that evil never rests.

"I don't want to detract merit from Levante, who always do very well when they are allowed to play their game at their stadium. I congratulate them for being clever. They know how to waste time and how to not give the ball back. They know this because it's also part of football. Our players don't feel comfortable in this sort of habitat and Levante know it."

El Pipita wrote:

"I don't want to detract merit from Levante, who always do very well when they are allowed to play their game at their stadium. I congratulate them for being clever. They know how to waste time and how to not give the ball back. They know this because it's also part of football. Our players don't feel comfortable in this sort of habitat and Levante know it."

"The match evened out once we were down to ten men. One of the teams kept defending, albeit less, and the other wanted to attack but lacked potential to do so. The game ended once they scored. We played well in the beginning. Our opponent didn't enter our half of the pitch and Casillas didn't even touch the ball. We had great chances to score and we failed to capitalise on them because the pitch was in bad shape and Levante defended fiercely. We dominated the match at times. There was a clear penalty that wasn't awarded to us and it would have also meant that player's second booking. If we had scored and they had been left with ten men the game would have been different."

"All points are important and it's better to lose one game than to draw two. Losing is tougher psychologically than drawing a match, but drawing two is worse than losing one. We'll be in a better position if we exchange this defeat with a reduced number of draws. Every game and every point at stake is important."

"My player knows about these situations and fell for the trap. That's why I make him partly responsible for the defeat and I don't have a problem doing so. But the referee is also to blame. It's too much to forgive a penalty and a red card. It is also our fault, mine and my players'. An important part of the meeting I had with my players today covered similar images to those of Khedira's red card. I didn't think one of my players could fall for such a trap. You prepare for games as best as you can and this is the repsonse you get. It's normal on one hand because we don't train or recreate situations like this. Players have to be sufficiently intelligent to know how to react and to avoid these situations. You also have to feel it in your gut if the ref will allow it."

"Kaka was one of our best men when we had a full lineup. He gave a fantastic performance. I'm very satisfied because he created room and covered a lot of ground. Cristiano Ronaldo told me he wasn't fit at 14:00. He said he could help, but that he wasn't in optimum form, that he didn't evolve as expected since yesterday. He wasn't ready to play and he didn't train yesterday."

"I don't want to detract merit from Levante, who always do very well when they are allowed to play their game at their stadium. I congratulate them for being clever. They know how to waste time and how to not give the ball back. They know this because it's also part of football. Our players don't feel comfortable in this sort of habitat and Levante know it."

H.A. wrote:Here's the whole interview:

"The match evened out once we were down to ten men. One of the teams kept defending, albeit less, and the other wanted to attack but lacked potential to do so. The game ended once they scored. We played well in the beginning. Our opponent didn't enter our half of the pitch and Casillas didn't even touch the ball. We had great chances to score and we failed to capitalise on them because the pitch was in bad shape and Levante defended fiercely. We dominated the match at times. There was a clear penalty that wasn't awarded to us and it would have also meant that player's second booking. If we had scored and they had been left with ten men the game would have been different."

"All points are important and it's better to lose one game than to draw two. Losing is tougher psychologically than drawing a match, but drawing two is worse than losing one. We'll be in a better position if we exchange this defeat with a reduced number of draws. Every game and every point at stake is important."

"My player knows about these situations and fell for the trap. That's why I make him partly responsible for the defeat and I don't have a problem doing so. But the referee is also to blame. It's too much to forgive a penalty and a red card. It is also our fault, mine and my players'. An important part of the meeting I had with my players today covered similar images to those of Khedira's red card. I didn't think one of my players could fall for such a trap. You prepare for games as best as you can and this is the repsonse you get. It's normal on one hand because we don't train or recreate situations like this. Players have to be sufficiently intelligent to know how to react and to avoid these situations. You also have to feel it in your gut if the ref will allow it."

"Kaka was one of our best men when we had a full lineup. He gave a fantastic performance. I'm very satisfied because he created room and covered a lot of ground. Cristiano Ronaldo told me he wasn't fit at 14:00. He said he could help, but that he wasn't in optimum form, that he didn't evolve as expected since yesterday. He wasn't ready to play and he didn't train yesterday."

"I don't want to detract merit from Levante, who always do very well when they are allowed to play their game at their stadium. I congratulate them for being clever. They know how to waste time and how to not give the ball back. They know this because it's also part of football. Our players don't feel comfortable in this sort of habitat and Levante know it."

Do you agree with this, the useless Kaka was one of the best starters?

I also like that statement, single loss better than two draws

alexander mahone wrote:I think Jose could've done better there with substitution by subbing in Lass earlier in the second half to provide a more solid midfield that will give better protection to our defense and also to support our attack with more control. It's like Jose seemed quite confidence that we would scored first in the second half after CR and Higuain in and he planned to sub in Lass once we're leading, which wasn't happening.

halamadrid2 wrote:exactly ozil wouldnt have had to play so deep then, higgy and ronaldo was isolated in 8 levante players yesterday, having ozil playing higher up couldve helped but hey mou obviously knows better than me by playing a guy whos just come back from an injury over a guy who was excellent in our last game vs dynamo

babun1024 wrote:
Lass didn't have a preseason or started in any match prior to this game