Mourinho refuses to put a price on Champions League victory

Jose Mourinho has revealed Chelsea’s players will not receive a team bonus if they progress beyond Paris Saint-Germain into the quarter-finals of the Champions League and will be rewarded only if they lift the trophy in Berlin in June.

The Premier League leaders play PSG at Stamford Bridge with the knockout tie poised at 1-1 and the visitors on €250,000 per man if they progress into the last eight.

PSG’s Qatari owners have implemented a sliding scale of bonuses that would lead each of their players to be paid €1million should they lift their first European Cup.

Chelsea, who offer their players considerable basic salaries, restructured their bonus policy before Mourinho’s return in 2013 but the manager questioned whether elite professionals are motivated by financial incentives for individual matches.

Good salary

“You know, for a long time, I don’t have bonuses,” he said. “The last time was at Porto. Win bonuses for matches or win bonuses to get through some rounds ... I never had a bonus like that again and I don’t think we should. The club pay us a very good salary to do our job.

“If we take the club into quarter-finals, semi-finals, finals but we don’t win the competition, we are doing a very good job for the club financially but I don’t think we should get extra money if we don’t win the last prize.

“Every player at the high level has enough money in salaries and I think everyone plays to win.”

Asked if players should receive bonuses for progressing through the knockout stages, he said: “No. If somebody puts on the table €250,000 to win a certain match it’s nice but I think professionalism goes beyond that.

“Don’t take this the wrong way but, for me, what’s more important is the happiness and pride of success, more than the money.

“Football is about our passion for the game, the happiness and the pride of victories. They have no price.”

While Arsenal and Manchester City face uphill struggles to overturn deficits from home defeats against Monaco and Barcelona respectively, Chelsea remain better placed to carry English hopes into the last eight.

“We have a big job to do,” Mourinho said. “To imagine English football, the best league in the world, without one single team in the Champions League quarter-finals is hard. But even if that happens we would still have the best league in the world. These are different competitions.

Training session

“Look at Bayern Munich, who can play almost a second team [in the Bundesliga] without any kind of pressure. Even PSG ... I saw their game on Saturday [won 4-1 against Lens] and our training session that day was harder than their match.”

Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola says a backlash awaits him if his side fail to advance past Shakhtar Donetsk into the quarter-finals tonight.

“I know what will happen if we do not make it to the next round of the Champions League. Bayern is a big club,” said Guardiola.

Bayern have set their sights on repeating their 2013 win, after also making the final in 2010 and 2012 and are banking on Guardiola, who has already won the trophy with Barcelona, to deliver the silverware.

Guardian Service