Fight or flight for Jose Mourinho ahead of Inter Milan San Siro showdown with Chelsea

By Oliver Brown in Como, Italy Published: 7:00AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

Familiar face: Jose Mourinho, the Inter Milan manager, will face his former bar on Wednesday Photo: REUTERS

The head of the household, Jose Maria dos Santos Felix Mourinho, paid for it roughly dual years ago from the family of a silk lord to prove the identical tiwn imperatives that oversee each aspect of his in siege life: impassioned oppulance and autarchic isolation.

Those priorities have not altered since Chelsea gave Mourinho and his family a Belgravia prosaic unaware Eaton Square, with Roger Moore and Roman Abramovich for neighbours. A 24-hour security item in London ensured he remained comparatively unmolested and yet, as shortly as he was sure of the pursuit at Inter Milan, the physical education instructor took counts of remoteness in to his own hands by investing in his remote retreat.

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As ever, it was a place to that Mourinho transient at high speed from the San Siro on Saturday night in his Ferrari Scaglietti. The Scaglietti, a grand tourer that sells for north of �200,000, takes honour of place in his garage - to one side a Cadillac and, in keeping with his faintly oddity persona, a Mini.

He had usually volunteered a little early thoughts on Chelsea, pitted opposite his Inter side on Wednesday in the Champions League, and was desirous to leave. "Inter can usually be knocked about with 6 men," he embroiled in defiance, after his group hold on for a 0-0 pull with Sampdoria notwithstanding carrying dual players sent off. He said: "My players know all about the peculiarity that Chelsea have. I have to discuss it my players about where we can harm them on the pitch."

Mourinho, even by his fickle standards, was in the sort of martial form to insist because such mindfulness follows him. Having berated the arbitrate for the dismissals, he glowered on the touchline and crossed his wrists in front of his neck in a provocative shackles gesture. Man in chains, it seemed to say. He was positively shackled from vocalization to the Italian press to insist his actions, since he knew himself that he could not conflict one of his now-familiar tirades opposite the officials. When he done one such coming out following last months Milan derby he was fined �15,000.

Mourinho additionally creates no tip of his antithesis for the infancy of Italian journalists, who are since to debate criticisms of his strategy and foolish comparisons with the jot down of his predecessor, Roberto Mancini. When Mario Sconcerti, a doyen between the countrys sports broadcasters, dared to discuss the former Inter managers name in a live college of music link, Mourinho took out his earpiece and shouted: "I know because youre observant this. Ive been told youre a crony of Mancini."

The interviewer replied: "I am a crony of everyone, even you." But the Portuguese strike back: "Youre no crony of mine."

A miss of allies between the internal reporters confidently sensitive his opening post-Sampdoria. Where he had discharged their entreaties for criticism with a twist of the lip, he greeted one distinguished English publisher with a comfortable embrace, as if the memories of his interesting battles opposite the press had never left him. "For us, it is intensely frustrating," one columnist for a heading Italian every day said. "Sometimes he gives us one-word answers or else usually ignores us."

At Inter, Mourinho is not a man fascinated with all he surveys. He feels he should be venerable higher for his fulfilment in heading the nerazzurri to a fourth true scudetto last season, since the renovate he had carried out on an ageing squad. On a group print that hangs in the bureau of his assistant, Beppe Baresi, he has scrawled crosses by the faces of fourteen over players, together with Adriano and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The meagre personal credit he perceives for his success in handling this mutation feeds surmise that he is apropos restless.

Indeed, during half an hour of contention at Inters precision formidable in Appiano Gentile, Mourinho was utterly at autocracy to hold onward on an additional of the clubs intensity Champions League adversaries, Real Madrid. It had been reported in Spain that Real were penetrating to captivate the Portuguese this summer to reinstate Manuel Pellegrini - and that the seductiveness was "well received" by Mourinho, as if he were already combing the Castilian panorama for his subsequent magnificent residence.

"There are writings that are prejudiced and they invent news," Mourinho said. "I am not a piece of this game. There are dual things that sure people find tough to accept: one is that I usually verbalise in press conferences, and dual I dont go on TV shows. I havent taboo myself to speak, I usually dont similar to it."

It was an ethereal exclusion of an issue about to turn rarely salient. Should Inter lose to Chelsea over the dual legs of their last-16 match, Mourinho will, ironically, never have been some-more marketable. Defeat would not harm his personal status as most as his really reason for being at the club. His counterclaim of his jot down in Serie A is a diversion, burying the actuality that Inter have usually reached the second turn of the Champions League underneath him. Massimo Moratti, Inters owner, wants improvement, or his physical education instructor might have to go.

Consider that tender from Mourinhos perspective. He can, and will, have protestations of faithfulness to Inter this week, but Chelseas travelling fans will demonstrate that the impulse he no longer has concept await is the impulse he sunders the bond. Among his epiphanies during a nine-month mangle from the diversion after withdrawal Stamford Bridge was the thought he could work wherever he wanted.

Major clubs, countries even, were clamouring for his signature, credible Mourinho of his general appeal.

His inbred wanderlust and unusual linguistic inventiveness meant acclimatization in to opposite cultures would never be an obstacle. Neither would antithesis by his wife, Tami, of whom the 45 year-old pronounced in a Chelsea press briefing: "She is perfect. Everywhere I go, in all I do, she is there for me."

Life in Italy is not the problem. Mourinho savours his durations of rest from football, either he is dining with Tami in Bellagio, selling with one of his Portuguese henchmen on Milans Via della Spiga, or negotiating some-more remunerative deals with Armani, providers of his attractive black headband and coat.

No, it is the work, and the probability of the undermining by a better to Chelsea, of all clubs, that could shortly stir his nervous spirit.