Daily Mail

Now Chelsea manager, sacked after row with woman doctor, could walk away with £10m

- By Christian Gysin c.gysin@dailymail.co.uk

JOSE MOURINHO was sacked as Chelsea manager for a second time yesterday as his damaging public row with the club’s female doctor came back to haunt him.

The Portuguese manager, who famously dubbed himself The Special One, was fired only seven months after winning the Premier League.

his extraordin­ary fall from grace was triggered by a very public spat with Chelsea’s 41-year-old female doctor, Eva Carneiro, in the first league game of the season.

he was infuriated after she went on to the pitch to treat the club’s injured star player Eden hazard as Chelsea were defending a counter attack.

Mourinho, 52, later labelled her ‘naive’. After the row intensifie­d in the media, she left the club and later launched legal claims against both Chelsea and him personally.

Last night, it emerged that the spat is likely to limit the compensati­on Mourinho will receive for being forced out amid allegation­s that he breached his contract over the dispute.

There had been reports he could get as much as £40 million after being sacked a few months into a new four-year deal, but he is now likely to get much less. it is understood that as part of the settlement to leave by ‘mutual consent’, Mourinho will be paid ‘only’ £250,000 a week until he gets a new job, up to a maximum of £10 million.

The row with Carneiro seemed to trigger a collapse in Chelsea’s form, as the team went from title winners to losing nine of their first 16 games this season. it left the club hovering only one place above the relegation zone.

Mourinho became embroiled in a series of other turbulent rows with players and officials, leaving the club’s billionair­e owner roman Abramovich with little choice but to act.

Mourinho had left Chelsea the first time after falling out with the famously impatient russian oligarch, but the two appeared to have patched up their difference­s. Yesterday, Chelsea said Mourinho would always be welcomed back.

however, the 52-year- old — who was on £8.5 million a year— has been left to reflect on the brutal nature of profession­al football as he prepares his family for Christmas without a team to run. he may even have looked back on his own childhood, when he learned how his father Jose Manuel Mourinho Felix — a former Portuguese internatio­nal goalkeeper — had been sacked from a management job on Christmas Day.

Last night, Mourinho was understood to be preparing to fly back to Portugal to be with his 77-year- old father, who suffered a brain haemorrhag­e and two strokes in April.

Mourinho is said to own properties in the port city of Setubal around 30 miles south of the capital Lisbon.

The row with Carneiro erupted when she and medical colleague Jon Fearn ran onto the pitch to treat the apparently injured Eden hazard. As Chelsea already had a player sent off, they were temporaril­y down to nine men.

immediatel­y after the game, Mourinho told the media that his ‘medical team’ had been ‘impulsive and naive’ and their decision showed they ‘did not understand the game’.

in the days that followed Mourinho refused to retract his caustic comments. Carneiro — said to be popular with many of the players — left the club the following month and consulted lawyers Mischon de reya over making a claim for unfair dismissal.

During the row the Premier League Doctors’ Group had said her treatment had been ‘unjust in the extreme’.

The manager was also accused — but cleared — of using discrimina­tory language towards Carneiro.

At the time of the row, the Gibraltarb­orn doctor thanked the public for their support in a Facebook message which attracted more than 42,000 ‘ likes’. But it is thought to have angered Mourinho, who felt it undermined him as manager.

Further problems came as Chelsea’s slump continued and Mourinho cut an increasing­ly morose figure both at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground in Surrey and during match days. he was fined £50,000 by the FA in October due to his comments about referees, then given a one-match stadium ban when his team travelled to play Stoke City.

in September, Mourinho looked less than impressed to be on the red carpet to receive a GQ Men Of The Year award supported by his 19-year- old daughter Matilde, whose low-cut dress left little to the imaginatio­n. She was attending the awards to support her father, who received the Editor’s Special Award.

Matilde and brother Jose Jr are the children of Mourinho and his wife, also Mathilde.

her father had recently signed an extended four- year contract with Chelsea. in recent weeks, after a string of poor Chelsea performanc­es, there was talk that he had ‘lost’ the dressing room and that his multimilli­on- pound players were not prepared to play for him.

Visitors to the training ground were told it had changed from a ‘happy and lively’ place to one where the mood was ‘sullen’.

After Chelsea’s 2-1 defeat against Leicester City on Monday, he accused his players of having ‘ betrayed’ his work. it may have been the last straw for everyone concerned.

He accused his players of ‘betrayal’

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