At the age of 62, Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho has fallen into the background in European football. He is preparing Benfica Lisbon (3rd place in Portugal, 10 points behind the leader Poro), after he was shamefully kicked out by Fenerbahce Istanbul, with whom he failed to win the title, nor was he kept in the groups of the Champions League, the team being eliminated even by Benfica. The Lusitanian does not like the appointments of young and inexperienced coaches, as is the case of Cristian Chivu (45 years old) at Inter Milan.
At the press conference prior to the Champions League match with Juventus Torino, on Wednesday evening, the Lusitanian technician said he was surprised by the fact that many inexperienced technicians get the opportunity to train big teams in Europe, and Italian journalists interpreted that Mourinho was also referring to Cristi Chivu, whom he trained at Inter between 2008-2010. In 2010, Chivu was an important pillar of the Milan team that won the historic treble: the title, the Cup and the Champions League.
“When AC Milan named Max Allegri, Juventus named Luciano Spalletti or AS Roma named Gasperini, there were no surprises for me. For me the only surprises are when technicians without a name behind them have the opportunity to coach the best teams in the world. These are the real surprises for me”, said Jose Mourinho in the press conference.
Afterwards, journalists from tuttomercato.web interpreted Jose Mourinho’s statements: “Therefore, Jose Mourinho only uses Italian teams as an example. He did not mention Napoli, who are coached by Antonio Conte, just like last season.
Instead, he named 3 teams that changed coaches last summer. However, he did not mention Inter, who a few months ago replaced Simone Inzaghi with Cristian Chivu.
Before taking charge of the team, Chivu had just 13 Serie A games as Parma coach, plus many years with Inter’s youth teams. So Mourinho’s thinking can only go there. Could it be that the target of Mourinho’s attack is precisely that Inter that now has Chivu on the bench, who also played at the club?“.
However, Jose Mourinho could also be referring to other young coaches who have received huge opportunities from big clubs. Two examples are even two former teams trained by the Lusitanian technician, Chelsea, Manchester United and Real Madrid. Almost everything passed.
Following Enzo Maresca’s departure from the Londoners’ bench, the club’s management decided to appoint 41-year-old Liam Rosenior as head coach. Retired from his playing career in 2018, the Englishman was interim coach at Derby County in 2018, and then coached Hull City in the Championship and Strasbourg in Ligue 1.
On the other hand, Real Madrid made a similar decision after the dismissal of Xabi Alonso. Arbeloa, the former Spanish international, two-time Real Madrid footballer, trained several junior teams of “Los Blancos” in the period 2020-2025, and this season at the beginning on the bench of Real Madrid’s B team, but he was urgently appointed as interim coach of the senior team.
And to the “devils” an inexperienced technician, Michael Carrick (44 years old), was appointed.
