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Jose Mourinho visits London just to get everyone excited

On the day that a report of Andre Villas-Boas being informed that he'll get the sack if Chelsea is knocked out of the Champions League by Napoli, Jose Mourinho used his international break to "secretly" visit London with his wife. According to tabloid trinity of The Mirror, The Sun and AS (only the English two are claiming it as a "World Exclusive" though), the Mourinhos were in town to pick out a new home in preparation for their supposedly inevitable departure from Madrid this summer. And so Jose could not smile in pictures with fans on King's Road in Chelsea.

This is being taken to mean that Chelsea, Spurs and even Arsenal are all "on alert" that Jose is on his way back to London and ready to grace one of them (or all three?) with his presence. If this is true and not just Jose's way of keeping himself and the papers busy during an interlull, then his two most likely destinations appear to be probable England manager Harry Redknapp's soon to be vacated job at Spurs and nervous Andre Villas-Boas' seat-filling gig at Chelsea. And though Mourinho has largely made up with Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, the Telegraph's Jason Burt believes there is one last thing he would have to do to get his old job back.

[T]here is the £18million in compensation that Mourinho wrung out of Abramovich, including £10million to exclude him from working in England for a period. That was to put off Spurs, and it worked, but it was a high price to pay for Abramovich, even if he has since wasted many more millions compensating managers he has sacked.

So here's the rub. Maybe if there is a vacancy and Mourinho does want to return he might have to do something that he would find difficult: apologise to Abramovich for leaving five years ago with that lorry-load of cash. The owner indulges in generous payouts. But he does not readily forgive. Could Jose say sorry?

No, but if Chelsea gets knocked out of the Champions League again, Abramovich would probably be willing to throw another 38 million of those piddly bank notes at Jose to bring him back.

Anyway, all of this is silly guesswork. Jose was probably in London just to ring Arsene Wenger's doorbell and then run away.

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