The Special One gave his first interview yesterday and seemed to wow the press.
He started by saying he didn’t want to be known as the Special One at Inter, he said, simply as Mourinho, one more man in a special club. But he could not drag it out beyond 30 seconds. “I have never forgotten that I am great coach. I am Jose Mourinho, who doesn’t change. I’m the same winning person, with the same mission, the same motivation.”
He spoke almost entirely in Italian, which he claimed to have learned in three weeks. A flabbergasted reporter from La Repubblica wanted to know how he could speak Italian so well. Never one for false modesty, Mourinho replied “because I’m very intelligent”, bringing the first laugh of the morning. His command of the language was a clear statement about the demands he places on himself. He declined to answer in Portuguese and only very reluctantly answered in English.
Mourinho declined to be drawn on a question from an English journalist on whether he would bring Chelsea players to Inter. Another English journalist then tried in a more roundabout way. “Why are we talking about Chelsea?”, Mourinho snapped. “It was a crafty way of getting you to answer the same question as before”, came the reply.
