Jose Mourinho seems to have had quite some time to reflect on the past.
Just few weeks after his sacking by Manchester United, the hugely successful manager is back in the public eye.
Speaking at BeIN SPORTS, he spoke about his time with Mohammed Salah at Chelsea.
”When [Chelsea] decided to sell him, it was not me. I bought him, I didn’t sell him, and my relationship with him was good, is good,” Mourinho told beIN SPORTS.
”I think that he doesn’t regret that move because everything went well. Everything went well for him and the progression went well for him but, at that moment, he was just a kid with a huge desire to play every week, every minute and we couldn’t give him it.”
“Lots of things have been told that are not true. People try to identify me with the coach that sold Salah; I am the coach that bought Salah. It’s completely the wrong idea.
”I played against Basel in the Champions League. Salah was a kid in Basel. When I play against a certain team, I analyze the team and the players for quite a long time and I fell in love with that kid. I bought the kid.
”I pushed the club to buy him and, at the time, we already had fantastic attacking players - [Eden] Hazard, Willian - we had top talent there. But I told [Chelsea] to buy that kid.
”He was just a lost kid in London. He was a lost kid in a new world and we wanted to work him to become better and better and better but he was more in the idea that he wanted to play and not to wait."
”So we decided to put him on loan. To put him on loan in a culture that I knew well—Italy, tactical football, physical football, good place to play. Fiorentina is a good team, without being a team with huge pressure playing for the title and we decided that move there.”
Mohammed Salah has since impressed at Liverpool since his arrival from Fiorentina in June 2017, notching 61 goals in 82 games, an amazing contrast to his time at Chelsea where he made just 19 appearances for the club.
While Jose Mourinho has taken his time to clear himself of the blame associated with what could be termed a "transfer disaster",
Chelsea fans and supporters will be cursing their hard luck on missing out on this gem of a player Salah has become. Perhaps a lesson for the future then, Chelsea.
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