Tuchel not the first driven potty by Porto
WHEN Barcelona played a European Cup tie at Porto in 1985, the team arrived at their hotel to discover they had been allocated rooms on the upper floors. ‘They told us there was a problem with the lifts,’ recalled Terry Venables. ‘We had to lug all the kit, everything we needed, up these huge flights of stairs.’ Barcelona progressed but it’s fair to say Venables didn’t see the engineering issue as coincidental. Jose Mourinho was surprised on arriving at Chelsea to find out that English clubs could not bend the schedule to suit their European commitments as Porto could, bringing matches forward to allow for maximum preparation time. Fast forward again and, in 2012, after a cordial lunchtime gathering between the clubs, Porto’s mood turned distinctly frosty when that night Manchester City complained of racist chanting towards their players Mario Balotelli and Yaya Toure. The fallout from that incident continues, with Porto sending a newsletter to supporters containing an extraordinary 529-word attack on Manchester City, when they were paired together in this season’s Champions League group stage.
Porto coach Sergio Conceicao also claimed Pep Guardiola had bad-mouthed him during the game — he said much the same about Thomas Tuchel, of Chelsea, this week. There were also false claims that Chelsea players celebrated getting Porto in the draw and, before both matches against English opposition this season, ugly jibes about Premier League wealth. So while we cannot know whether Tuchel did indeed tell Conceicao and his club to f*** off, as is claimed, he would be speaking for an awful lot of people if he did.