It was 20 years ago yesterday that José Mourinho declared, not for the first time in his career, that football could be very cruel. “We have to accept the result,” he said. “They scored a goal, if you can say they scored it. I can say that the linesman scored it.”
He was talking, of course, about the ‘ghost’ goal by Luis García that decided the Champions League semi-final between his Chelsea side and Liverpool – given at Anfield by the Slovakian linesman Roman Slysko, despite not having crossed the line.
Those first Chelsea years can feel like the vintage years, as he turned English football upside down but now, at 62, the challenge is different: can he come back to the Premier League again?