http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=D&xml=/sport/2004/
12/12/sfnmou12.xml
Mourinho: I've changed for the better
BY Trevor Haylett (Filed: 12/12/2004)
Jose Mourinho is a force for positivity in English football. Peel away all
those layers of self-confidence and within lies a unique personality who
projects himself and the game he serves with eloquence and honesty and a
refreshing lack of cant.
If he is helping to portray the game in a more favourable light then the
favour is being returned. English football, he revealed, has made him a
better person.
Part of the reason why the Chelsea manager continues to divide opinion
elsewhere is because of the controversy he courted in his homeland. As
The Telegraph reveals today, he failed in his bid to prevent an unauthorised
biography being soldin Portugal, which detailed events from his childhood
and early days in management. He is clearly keen to erase elements of his
past and now he insists he is a changed man.
In his official biography which is out this week, he recalls the unseemly
reaction when he punched the ball out of a Lazio opponent's grasp and
incurred a touch line ban from UEFA. That behaviour, he says, now belongs in
the past and he has a lid on his most extreme emotions.
"Everyone learns from their mistakes," he said. "English football is changing
me." Into Mr Nice Guy perhaps? "Maybe, but certainly someone with a better
control of my emotions. In Portugal, if the referee had not given me a
penalty like the one that wasn't given me at Aston Villa and against Fulham,
then I open my mouth.
"But if I keep opening my mouth in England, I have to go and visit the FA.
I have to sit in the stands for a few games and I have to pay them an amount
that I could use for Christmas gifts.
"It's helping me to change. I don't lose my emotion for the game, I don't
lose my desire to win, but it is teaching me to have a better sense of fair
play and better relations with the other people involved in the game."
Even the most experienced and cynical player will still take a lead from the
manager and the signals he emits and Chelsea will not step out to face
Arsenal today weighed down by pressure and fear. The essence of Mourinho's
preachings since Tuesday's Champions League defeat at his former home at
Porto has been that win, lose or draw, they will still rule the roost come 6pm.
He relishes the way the game's satellite television paymaster has stoked the
competitive flames by depicting the two rival managers as opposing warlords
in an Arnold Schwarzenegger epic but believes Sky TV's `Judgement Day' billing
for the season's first meeting between the superpowers is not strictly accurate.
"It is not live or die, it is not win or lose, it is not first or second,"
he said. "For us it is first or first. We will still be in first place at
the end of the game and all that will be determined is the distance by which
we are in front. That is the reality and if, as a consequence of that, we
are cool about the task, then that is good."
While Arsene Wenger continued to wrestle with the dilemma of whether to keep
faith with his reserve goalkeeper Manuel Almunia or recall Jens Lehmann,
Mourinho has no selection worries, merely an array of prodigious talent from
which to choose. The defeat in Porto had a shock factor because it was only
his team's second reverse of the campaign but, with their qualification to
the Champions League knock-out stages long assured, it was scarcely a
huge surprise. Come the first whistle this afternoon he is sure they will be
back in the groove.
"I am only sorry I can not play everybody because they all want to be
involved in this game. I don't believe in fear. Arsenal are not afraid of us
and we are not afraid of them. They respect us because they know we are a good
team and we respect them."
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