After Manchester City’s 3-0 thrashing of defending champions Chelsea, many people were wondering what was wrong with Chelsea. After sputtering to a 2-2 draw last week and having your starting goalkeeper sent off to losing 3-0 today, it would be normal to feel that something is wrong with Chelsea. It certainly isn’t the case if your name is Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho, after subbing John Terry out for the first time since he’s been Chelsea manager, went into a very confusing explanation as to how Chelsea was the best team in the second half. You know, the half where Manchester City scored twice.
Okay, I appreciate Jose Mourinho’s mind games as much as the next person but he can’t possibly truly believe Chelsea was the better team at any point during this game. This is still a great team and yeah, this game was an anomaly that probably won’t happen again this season, but they weren’t good today. Forget about the belief that the result was “fake” and call it for what it was. That Manchester City’s attackers ran circles around your back line and couldn’t handle the counterattacks, that your striker had to be restrained at halftime or else he would’ve been sent off and that you didn’t get a legitimate shot on target until the 70th minute. Yeah, those are all the marks of the “best” team.
The only thing I felt Mourinho was correct about was that Asmir Begovic made some important saves in the first half to keep Chelsea in the game. Begovic was supposed to be a backup, albeit a very talented EPL starting capable backup goalkeeper, but he came in after Thibaut Courtois served his red card suspension from last week and did a great job. The record will say he allowed three goals but he made many great saves and the there wasn’t much he could do on the three goals.
Maybe we have all been wrong about Mourinho’s handling of Chelsea physic Eva Carneiro. We branded Mourinho as a sexist as he demoted Carneiro to not doing gamedays anymore because she didn’t understand the game by running out to treat a player at a critical part of the game. I feel that’s highly dubious but it might be true. Carneiro may understand soccer but she may not understand Jose Mourinho’s view of soccer. Considering the things that Mourinho said today, I wouldn’t blame Carneiro, or any other normal person for not understanding Jose Mourinho’s view of soccer.
