Former Chelsea and Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho, has revealed that he defeated Manchester City, led by Pep Guardiola, a few times with a defensive strategy he tagged ‘park the double bus’.
The 61-year-old was reacting to Arsenal’s 0-0 draw with Manchester City in March as the Premier League race heads to the final game weeks.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Mourinho stated that he had a lot of admiration for Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta but dismissed media reports that Arteta employed a ‘magic strategy’ to earn a point against Guardiola’s tutored Man City.
He said, “I am happy because I like the kid (Arteta), and I am happy everything goes for him. But the way they [Arsenal] played to get that point – and the way the media spoke about a magic strategy.
“In my time, it was not a magic strategy, and I won at Manchester City a few times. But it was not an amazing strategy. It was a defensive game. Park the bus. Park the double bus. It was a different perspective.”
Speaking on his time at Chelsea, where he won three league titles, one FA Cup, and three League Cups, Mourinho revealed that he had the ‘triangle of trust’ of Peter Kenyon and former owner Roman Abramovich.
His words: “I was very confident in what Chelsea had already. I was very, very self-confident about what I feel we need to make that step.” He noted that the arrivals of Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Petr Cech before him, as well as the development of John Terry. Also, that the club trusted him to sign Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira.
“It was immediately that team full of aggression and full of power at every level,” he says. “Then it was just going and going … a little bit against the odds. It was [from the sceptics] ‘At Christmas, Chelsea will die’. Then it was Easter. Then it was in the last two or three matches. But by the last two or three games we were already celebrating.”
Mourinho, who’s currently out of work after being sacked by AS Roma in January, says he would only manage a club where ‘everything has to be fair.’
“The only thing I want is that the targets and the objectives have to be established by everyone in a fair way,” he said
“I cannot go to a club where, because of my history, the objective is to win the title. No. The only thing I want is that it has to be fair.
“Do you think if I was at a big Premier League club and we were sixth, seventh, eighth, in the table, I still have a job? What I am saying is people [should] look at me the way they look at others. What is important for me is if the club has objectives and for me to be able to say I am ready to fight for these.
“I don’t want to say realistic, but [at least] semi-realistic. Because when I went to Roma nobody was dreaming about European Cup finals and we did it. It’s not possible I go to a club almost relegated and the objective is to win the Champions League. It’s good but it is not fair.”
He also added that he’s not leaving football anytime soon. “It is not like I am 61 and I want to stop at 65,” he says. “No way at all. There is still a long career to go.”
