José Mourinho has taunted Paris Saint-Germain before the second leg of their Champions League round-of-16 tie tonight by claiming that Chelsea’s training sessions are more difficult than their opponent’s games in Ligue 1.
The Chelsea manager has long complained that English clubs are at a disadvantage in Europe because of the intensely competitive nature of the Barclays Premier League, a view he took to its extreme yesterday by saying that his players worked harder during training on Saturday than PSG in their 4-1 win over Lens.
Chelsea enjoyed a rare weekend off as a result of their early exit from the FA Cup, but Mourinho put his players through their paces on the training ground as they seek to progress to the Champions League quarter-finals after the 1-1 draw in Paris last month. Chelsea are the best-placed English side to reach the last eight after Arsenal and Manchester City suffered home defeats by Monaco and Barcelona respectively in their first legs, but Mourinho insists that there are mitigating circumstances for such disappointing results.
“To imagine English football, the best league in the world, without one single team in the Champions League quarter-final is hard,” he said. “But it’s more difficult for English clubs. Do you think it’s normal where Everton is in the Premier League? It’s not normal, but they play every Thursday in the Europa League and come back and play again on Sundays.
“It’s more difficult for English clubs. This league is very difficult and the Champions League is a completely different situation. Can you imagine in the quarter-finals, an English team competing with a Bayern Munich that has 11-point [league] advantage? They [Bayern] can play without any kind of pressure.
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“Even PSG, I saw their game on Saturday. Our training session was harder than their game.”
Mourinho also hit out at PSG’s physical approach in the first leg, which he likened to a League Two side.
“I was surprised, because a team with fantastic players was the team with a record number of fouls,” Mourinho said. “They were the team making foul after foul, the team which stopped Eden Hazard with fouls all the time.
“I thought an English team would never be surprised by aggression. We’ve played against sides from the Championship in the cups and teams from League One and League Two, but the most aggressive was PSG. With such quality, I was expecting more football.”