Benitez hints at Mourinho return to Chelsea
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, May 8, 2013
Interim Chelsea manager Rafael Benitez has dropped a massive hint that Jose Mourinho will be returning to Stamford Bridge this summer.
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Rafael Benitez hints that Jose Mourinho will be the next Chelsea manager. |
Benitez confirmed yesterday he would be leaving his temporary role with Chelsea at the end of the season by saying "the next year there will be another manager here".
The Spaniard then added "I think everybody knows who will be here."
The momentum behind Mourinho's probable return to Chelsea gathered speed when he said after Real Madrid's Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund last week, "I know in England I'm loved. ... I know I'm loved by some clubs, especially one."
Mourinho said last Friday he would make a decision at the end of the season about whether he would be leaving Madrid, where the Portuguese is contracted through 2016.
Meanwhile, Mourinho has hit back at his own player Pepe after the defender said the Real boss ought to have more respect for club captain Iker Casillas.
Mourinho had said on Friday that his principal regret during his three-year stay in Madrid was not signing his current first-choice goalkeeper Diego Lopez at the end of his first season.
Those words were then described as "not the most adequate" by Pepe on Saturday after Real's 4-3 win over Valladolid and he went on to describe Casillas as an "institution in this club and in Spain".
However, Mourinho believes Pepe's rebellion is purely because he himself has lost his first-team place to 19-year-old French center-back Raphael Varane.
"It is very easy to analyze the Pepe thing. His problem has a name, and it is Raphael Varane," Mourinho told a press conference yesterday. "It is not easy for a 31-year-old man with experience to be run over by a 19-year-old kid. And he is a fantastic kid. I have had the courage to play a kid. The problem is simple, Pepe's life has changed."
The former Chelsea boss also returned to the topic of his decision to continue with Lopez in goal ahead of Casillas since the latter returned from a hand injury over a month ago.
"I don't toss a coin to decide who plays. I do it thinking, discussing, analyzing, studying for many hours my decisions, watching games, trying to come to an agreement in my head.
"I like Diego Lopez better as a goalkeeper than Iker Casillas. I don't do it to harm anyone."
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