This is probably my favourite story of the year so far. An 'inside source' has revealed to the Times that in defiance of a UEFA touchline ban during a Chumps League match against Bayern a few years back, Jose Mourinho employed all sorts of black arts to get instructions to his players, including laundry baskets, bobble hats, and loudspeakers.
"For the first leg at Stamford Bridge, Mourinho arrived early enough to get in position. He watched the game on a television in the dressing-room and, during the first half, communicated to his staff in the dugout by radio or telephone. “You can get mobile reception in the dressing-room,” the source said. “It depends what network and in what room.”
At the time, television commentators spotted and commented on the fact that Rui Faria, the fitness coach, had a strange kink in his bobble hat and repeatedly scratched his ear. It was the sort of kink that could be caused by a wire and earpiece. “It was so obvious, to keep playing with your ear like that,” the source said.
Suspicious of skulduggery going on under their noses, Uefa officials went down to the tunnel, but by then the players were back in the dressing-room and listening to a team talk from their manager.
One source claims that knowing that the listening device had been rumbled, Chelsea simply used more rudimentary communication in the second half. It was noted at the time that Silvinho Louro, the goalkeeping coach, made several trips back to the dressing-room. “He’s a nervous spectator,” a source close to Mourinho joked at the time, but Louro kept coming back with bits of paper that were passed to the other coaches. Whatever the pieces of paper contained, they tended to coincide with substitutions.
Mourinho was not waiting for the players at the end of the match, which Chelsea won 4-2, because he had already allegedly clambered into one of the kit skips. He was wheeled out of the dressing-room by members of the backroom staff and, it is believed, back into the leisure club in the Chelsea Village hotel at the ground, where it had been reported that he spent the entire evening.
In a passable impression of Inspector Clouseau, Uefa’s hapless officials left none the wiser. Insiders claim Mourinho was so thrilled that he joked openly about his trip in the skip in front of his players at training the next morning.
In the second leg, at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, there was a greater risk of detection if he tried to enter the dressing-room. The sources allege that Mourinho went into the stands to watch but, apparently flustered by the close attention of a camera crew, he quickly departed for the team hotel.
The privacy might have been useful. The Timeshas been told that a speaker had been set up in the dressing-room so that he could talk to the players over the telephone at half-time. “There was a massive speaker,” a source said. “José was at the hotel.” Uefa’s representatives had surpassed themselves yet again by approaching Faria to check if there was anything under his hat. There wasn’t.
In a recent biography to which Mourinho contributed, he boasted about how he overcame a touchline ban during his days at FC Porto by sending messages to his assistants from his seat in the stands via “a small, sophisticated telecommunications device”. He even listed the precise instructions, which included: “Tell Deco [the Porto midfield player] I’m p****d off, I want more!” and, “Pressure on linesman, everybody.”" [The Times]
You've got to hand it to him. If you're wandering what a Jose teamtalk sounds like, listen to a recently recorded one here.
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