Jose Mourinho: I will ‘KILL’ Chelsea

Now think about that headline for a second – doesn’t it make you curious? Doesn’t it jump out at you as a paradox – regardless of the terms (and they were not as bad or acrimonious as the media would like you to believe) Mourinho left Chelsea on, for him to say something like this to the fans and players he loves? So crude and so violent – it’s almost as if you’re dreaming.

Except you’re not, and the headline is a play on what Mourinho said – less vicious but equally interesting and superbly calculated.

Consider BBC’s initial coverage: the headline reads ‘Mourinho eager to kill Chelsea’ which makes him sound like a bloodthirsty maniac and when juxtaposed against the picture (the backdrop has dark-skinned people, giving a tribal, feral feel to the whole situation) and the bbc forum thread titled ‘what do you think of Mourinho now’ is poking you in the eye, urging you to respond emotionally. This is not journalism folks, this is emotional manipulation.

Here’s what Jose Mourinho actually said:

“If I play them in the Champions League, I want to go there and kill them – that’s my message.

I still feel Chelsea is a part of me, I’ll have Chelsea in my heart forever. I left and for five months you couldn’t get a bad word from me in relation to the club and you cannot do it in the future too.

I think it was last week that I spoke with people from the club. I was speaking with Mr Abramovich and chief executive Peter Kenyon because we keep in touch. I was telling them I wish them always good, I wish them always to succeed, I wish them always to win.”

He talks about his love for Chelsea, his good relations with the management and his wish that the team wins. And what do the Beeb focus on? His single comment on how he would be play it if, after going back to football management, his team came up against Chelsea.

I can imagine (although in retrospect that’s not such a good idea) the reporter wetting himself when he heard the words ‘kill them’ come out of Mourinho’s mouth – that is, if Mourinho actually said them.

What? Is it possible Mourinho never said it?

Yup – here’s some evidence, if you needed any, of how the media creates false interviews and quotes – it’s a link to arseblog.com’s transcript of Eduardo’s interview with Croatian TV, where they find out that the press has fabricated many things about the whole Eduardo situation.

Now…please head over here to the 606 and tell the BBC to stop misleading its readers – not just with the headline but with the way they’ve spun the story. It’s bad enough that we have greedy agents, greedy owners and greedy administrators using football to their advantage, but surely we can do something about it where the press is concerned?

And for the reader who wonders why I admire Jose Mourinho the master baiter, this is why – he knows how to set a fire under the press’s fat arse, and he does it so naturally (here’s a bunch of Mourinho quotes) that you cannot help but applaud (unless of course, he overdoes it with his moaning and bitching, and then he just has to be fired 🙂 ).