The (surprisingly) still unemployed José Mourinho has been watching this summer’s developments from the safety of his own couch, and he’s got a few opinions, including on Frank Lampard’s arrival at Chelsea, in the latest bit of this exclusive interview that Sky Sports have been doling out.
As with most of Mourinho’s punditry, it features plenty of (seemingly) honest and straightforward talk, plus common sense ways of approaching various situations. This is where Mourinho extolls the qualities of Kurt Zouma, for example, calling him a title-winner (which he is) who could easily be that defensive reinforcement that club needs this summer. Or putting Tammy forward as the center forward we need and deserve. And this is also where he also talks about Lampard’s qualities as a person, and how those might or might not translate to management — all the while not making any concrete predictions about hot things could go.
“What I always saw in Frank was an example of a professional. I was lucky to have so many untouchables, but he was one of the untouchable players I had in my career. A tremendous professional. Tremendous.”
[...]
“It would be nice and easy for me to say, because I love him, that he’s going to be a phenomenal manager. It would be very nice for me to say, but I’m not going to say that, and I cannot also say I don’t believe he’s going to do it, because that’s not the way I feel.
“I feel that he has a potential, I feel that he loves, which is a very important thing, he loves - that’s the reason why he is there - and I wish him the best but only time can speak and in a few years we will see.”
With Chelsea set up to handle a transfer ban by building internally and Lampard at least having the potential to be very successful, Mourinho believes that Chelsea’s only actual problem for this season is losing Eden Hazard. His departure is the biggest factor in how well the season might or might not go.
“The only problem for them is obvious which is that they lost a phenomenal player. Eden Hazard was a special player for Chelsea and they lost him, apart from that I don’t see any problem for them.”
-José Mourinho; source: Sky
We’ll find out soon enough if Mourinho was seeing this situation with the customary clarity we expect from him.