HAZARD HAS KEY TO TITLE
Mourinho admits history favours Chelsea when Eden is performing
JOSE MOURINHO has backed old club Chelsea to win the Premier League title – as long as Eden Hazard stays in form.
Mourinho returns to Stamford Bridge today when Manchester United take on the Blues admitting he has been impressed with his former team under new boss Maurizio Sarri.
Sarri’s men remain unbeaten and are joint top, mainly thanks to the form of their Belgian playmaker.
Mourinho said: “Obviously they’re not playing in the Champions League. That puts them just in the Premier League, and in the Premier League the results speak for themselves.
“Very good results, top of the league and
HIS team may sit top of the Premier League, alongside champions Manchester City, and are being seen as the closest pretenders to the crown, only three months after he arrived in England. Today’s opponents may languish in eighth place, struggling to recapture former glories, their latest leader under growing pressure. But as he prepared to tangle with Jose Mourinho for the first time today, Maurizio Sarri happily said: “Of course he is better than me.” The Special One against The Humble One – even The Unknown One. For Sarri also confessed to feeling “lucky” to have got the Chelsea job.
“Did I ever think a day like this would come when I would be facing him? Probably not,” he said.
Certainly not in June 2012, when the Italian Serie B club Empoli appointed an obscure former banker but successful examateur coach as manager.
A month earlier, Mourinho had signed a new multi-millionpound four-year deal to stay on as the manager of Real their new Madrid. His team had just won La Liga, setting records galore for the most games won in a season, the most away wins, most points in any of the top European leagues. “My target in that period was to be a professional coach,” recalled Sarri. “I didn’t think then that I would be able to arrive in the Champions League. “It was incredible at that moment to think that – so I think I am lucky. “I am lucky because it’s very difficult to start in a professional team, and to finish up in one of the most important clubs in the world. Apart from if you are good, or not good, it’s
very difficult. So you need to be lucky. You need to be in the right place in the right time.
“At Empoli, I had a very young team, but the players were very good. Nobody knew them then, but they were very good. So I was lucky.”
While taking Empoli into Serie A remains Sarri’s greatest achievement, Mourinho has won titles in Portugal, England – with Chelsea of course, three times – Italy and Spain, and the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan.
“At the moment, he is better than me for sure,” said Sarri. “I hope to improve myself in the future, but at the moment he is better than me.
“First of all, the results, at the moment. He has won everything everywhere. So I need to win if I want to compare myself to him.
“At the moment, it’s not possible to compare us. You are talking about one of the best coaches in the world, and I’m not at the moment one of the best. “I am not the Special One. No. The Special One is Mourinho. The thing about Mourinho is not the way of his football, whether I like it or not. The fact is that he is able to win. He has won everything everywhere, so probably that means he is right. He will be able to win also in the future, because he is really one of the best. Maybe the best. His results are the best. “I don’t know if I can match Mourinho. Our character is completely different. But I’d like to win something because, right now, I need to win. “I have won Serie B, Serie C, and Serie D, which is like the Championship, League One and League Two here in England. “But now I need to win at this level.” Yet despite the discrepancy in their trophy cabinets, Sarri insists there is one way in which he and Mourinho are equals that allows him to feel at home on the same touchlines. “Without determination, it would have been impossible to arrive here from a nonprofessional team.
“I can speak very calmly, but my level of determination is the top level,” he said. “The character is different from Mourinho, but maybe the level of determination is the same.”
He added: “I have my character, and it is probably different to his. So I have to be myself, always, or I am not credible.”