FanHouse JoseMourinho

Jose Mourinho might say he's not so special anymore, but he'll have to be something pretty close to that to accomplish his latest mission -- rehabilitating the image of Italian football.

"[We must] make the fans more responsible and change their relationships with the police. In other countries we don't see nice images. We see violence, deaths, fans who are banned from traveling to away games.

"I will never forget that my bench at Chelsea was three metres away from the fans: I could see fathers, sons, women, children, families. There football was without fear ... Whatever the result, life will go on. I would be proud, one day, to have contributed to changing calcio. Why shouldn't things be like this, one day, in Italy too?"

I can think of many reasons why it won't be, starting with the fact that club owners seem to like things the way they are. Plus. the ultras wouldn't have an excuse to get their stabby on when visiting fans who walk down the wrong alley.

I wish Mourinho all the luck in the world in cleaning up Serie A, but he's going to need a ton of help, and I have my doubts that he's going to get it from people who could make a difference. He'll be in for a real shock when he gets his first match result sheet in advance of the matches themselves.

For the record, "I'm fantastic" in Italian is "Sono fantastici." So says Google, anyway.

In a move that was as hard to predict as the sun rising in the east this morning, former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho was named the new manager at Inter Milan today.

The big Italian club has won Serie A three times in the last three years under Roberto Mancini, but after a series of spectacular flame-outs in the UEFA Champions League, Inter sacked Mancini and brought in the Special One to change their European fortunes.

Inter plans to start by giving Mourinho £100 million to spend during the summer transfer window, which means the raid on Stamford Bridge should begin any day now. Didier Drogba is probably gone after his Moscow slap fest -- even though Henk Ten Cate, the coach who tossed Drogba under the bus, was shown the door last week. Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Ricardo Carvalho might follow Mourinho to Milan as well. After all, if you want to kill your old club, you start by buying all their biggest stars, right?

Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has one goal when he returns to the sidelines next season -- beat the living crap out of Chelsea.

"I hope to play them next season in the Champions League. If I play them in the Champions League, I want to go there and kill them - that's my message."

Ironically, Mourinho also said this:

"I still feel Chelsea is a part of me, I'll have Chelsea in my heart forever. I left and for five months you couldn't get a bad word from me in relation to the club and you cannot do it in the future too."

Yes, he used to love them, but he has to kill them. Fantastic. Someone needs throw that G'n'R disc in the karaoke machine for the Special One's next "I'm on Setanta Sports" appearance.

Depending on what day of the week it is, the rumor mil has put Mourinho with Italian clubs A.C. Milan and Juventus or Spanish powerhouses Barcelona and Real Madrid. Milan and Madrid were both eliminated from the Champions League earlier this week, so bet on one of those clubs coming for Mourinho first. If it's Madrid, bet on Didier Drogba to follow the Portugeezer there.

Yesterday, Jose Mourinho withdrew his name from the list of potential managers of the English National team. UK and Italian tabloids doing what they do, immediately produced rumors that the former Chelsea manager would be taking over Italian powerhouse AC Milan at the start of next season. Current AC Milan manager Carlo Ancellotti announced earlier this season that he will step down in May, however, he is linked to both the Italian National team and Barcelona potentially open managerial positions.

Das FanHaus feels that the usually obligatory joke linking former Colorado football coach Gary Barnett to any of these jobs would be uncouth. The coaching carousel and its accompanying cliches are not strictly American constructs, but we long to find the European equivalent of "coaching bicycle" so that we may make the ritual humor as cosmopolitan as possible.

(H/T: Goal.com)

I've never been a fan of Chelsea or their manager Jose Mourinho, but I'll got to be honest with you ... this story has made my opinion of him do a total 180°. He's now among the contenders for my favorite coach of all time.

In 2005, Mourinho was suspended by UEFA, in effect, banning him from any contact with his players in two tournament games against Bayern Munich. Today, it's being reported that to get around that ban, Mourinho got to the stadium early, watched the game from the locker room, and communicated with his assistant coach on the sidelines via a hidden earpiece. Then, to avoid being caught, he stuffed himself into a laundry bin and was wheeled out of there.

That is awesome. I mean, say what you want about cheating, playing by the rules, sportsmanship, fair play, blah blah blah ... a coach who is willing to hide amongst the laundry so he can help his team is at once a gigantic egomaniac, a creative visionary, and solely committed to his team.

Chelsea denies any wrongdoing, and alleges that the whole thing was published to hurt their team in advance of their upcoming Champions League matches. And I understand that they have to say that, but for Jose Mourinho ... this is a badge of honor. He should be damn proud of himself.

Chelsea's manager, Portugal's Jose Mourinho, will apparently not get in any trouble for some some naughty things to a referee. I'll just cut and paste from the ESPN article, because filthy words such as these would never leave my lips:

The Chelsea manager was alleged to have use the phrase filho da puta - which translates as 'son of a whore' or 'son of a bitch' - in a confrontation with Riley at half-time in the FA Cup quarter-final draw with Tottenham on Sunday.

Mourinho's justification, however, is priceless. He says he didn't mean it to be abusive, and that the "word can be abusive if you understand it as an abusive word." My language skills are not world class, but I'm curious ... in what other way could one understand "son of a whore"?

"Oh, you mean my mother was forced to live in trying circumstances, and did what she had to do to feed her family? Oh! Well, thank you, sir, I'll tell my mother of your generous words. And since you were so complimentary of my family, guess what? Your father fondles the genitalia of baby donkeys! Yes! Yes! Tell him I said so, will you?"

Mourinho also offered this:

"If you listen to me speaking I say the kind of word you mention 10 times in every 15 words. If you have a microphone on the dugout, I say that during the game 20 times, easy."

Good God, man ... get a grip on yourself. I'd say that he curses like a sailor, but I don't want to slander profane sailors like that. That's a staggering amount of cursing. No one embraces profanity like I do, but that seems excessive, even for me. You just can't run around calling people sons of whores, I don't care if you are the coach of an underachieving, high-priced, boring, whiny football team.