CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Inter Milan manager José Mourinho believes that tonight's semi-final, first leg clash with Barcelona is a wide open, 50-50 contest.
These days, the Special One prefers to avoid news conferences given his difficult relations with the Italian media.
However, Uefa regulations oblige him to talk to the media on the eve of Champions League matches, thus affording another intriguing glimpse inside the Special Mind.
Mindful of the ease with which Barcelona dispatched Inter in the Group phase, playing them off the pitch in a 2-0 win at the Camp Nou last November, Mourinho yesterday suggested that this tie would be a very different matter.
Match stats do not always mean a lot but there was one statistic from that November 24th game that actually said something – Barca dominated possession by an astonishing 59 per cent to 41 per cent.
Mourinho, however, is not worried, saying: “In the first game against them (in the Group phase) last September in Milan, they were better than us for the first 10 minutes and for the last 10 minutes, but apart from that there was nothing in it. Sure, in the return leg in Barcelona, they were much the better side, winning deservedly and easily.
“But a lot of time has gone by since November. They are probably as good now as they were in November but we have come on a lot.
“Tactically, we are a much more compact team, our Champions League mentality, our psychological approach is totally different. For all those reasons, I say that this tie is a 50-50 affair”.
Mourinho acknowledged that, as per usual, he has prepared himself thoroughly for this game taking a full immersion course in DVDs of the current Barcelona side: “In the last four and a half months, I didn’t see Barca play even once. In the last two weeks, I’ve looked closely at their games against Real Madrid, Stuttgart and Arsenal but that’s business as usual for me.”
Asked what precautions he would take to stop Barcelona’s talented Argentine, Lionel Messi, Mourinho said that it was against his nature to do a “man-to-man” marking job on the player who scored all four goals in Barca’s 4-1 destruction of Arsenal two weeks ago. “In my culture, football is not about one man . . . but it’s obvious he deserves special attention.”
Mourinho also pointed out that it was difficult to predict just where and how Messi would play in that he could play “on the left, on the right, as the centre forward or even behind Ibrahimovic as against Arsenal”.
Inter come into this game on the back of a helter-skelter weekend which saw them reclaim the lead in Serie A with an impressive 2-0 defeat of Juventus on Friday night only to be overtaken for the second weekend in a row by AS Roma, 2-1 winners of a dramatic Rome derby against Lazio on Sunday night.
With just four Serie A games remaining, Inter trail Roma by one point.
Mourinho, however, rejected the idea that this meant added pressure for his club, saying: “Inter are in the position that 99 per cent of European clubs would like to be in. I hope we are in the same position this time next year. Sure, we’ve got the problems that you get with a side that plays 70 games in a season but if you’ve got this far, these are wonderful problems to have.”
Asked about the fact that the European air traffic chaos has forced Barcelona to make a two-day bus trip to reach Milan, Mourinho offered his own typically original slant: “Sure, it’s not ideal to have to travel by bus, but if it had happened to me, I would have tried to use it as a bonding experience that would bring the squad ever more together.”
Barcelona will use the time on the bus journey to study their opponents. Manager Pep Guardiola said: “We’ve had 14 hours on a bus to look at some matches.” He added, however, that such preparation was not ideal for his players.
“Tomorrow we’re not playing against nobodies, they’re a team that are a threat with really competitive players.
“We really want to win but we could lose as we’ll play against one of the best teams in Europe who have had an awesome Champions League.”
Barca demolished Arsenal in the quarter-finals with the imperious Messi scoring four goals in the second leg.
Inter, last European champions in 1964 and 1965, are desperate for success on the biggest stage after decades of underachievement.
The winners will play Bayern Munich or Olympique Lyon in next month’s Madrid final.