Mourinho warned a ball-boy at Palace he risked being punched, but now the Chelsea boss has the youngsters on side as they play part in Champions League Win Jose Mourinho was critical of a Crystal Palace ball-boy for delaying the game during his side’s defeat at Selhurst Park – but now the Chelsea boss is himself instructing the youngsters to play their part. Such was Mourinho’s degree of planning for Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final tie with Paris Saint-Germain, even the ball-boys were primed with instruction to return the ball in double-quick fashion. With Chelsea needing to score at least twice to reverse their 3-1 deficit from the first leg, the Blues chief was seen priming his ball-boys early in the game. Indeed, there was one episode in the fifth minute where two balls ended up on the pitch, such was the haste with which the ball-boys were responding to a break in play. Even Mourinho got involved and wasted no time in feeding his players the ball when it fell in his domain. The ball-boys continued to recycle play at speed as the game went on and, after Andre Schurrle’s first-half strike put Chelsea to within one goal of progression, they played a role as the hosts chased the tie-clincher. And so it was that Demba Ba pounced three minutes from time to book their place in the semi-finals. Mourinho’s use of the ball-boys was all part of his forensic approach to the contest, which had also seen him devise contingency tactics for all possible scenarios. It was a far cry from his anger with the Palace ball-boy during last month’s 1-0 loss, a result which put a severe dent in their title ambitions. On that occasion he told the teenager he ‘risked being punched’ should he continue to interfere with the game having delayed play as Cesar Azpilicueta sought to take a throw-in. At the time, Mourinho said he was trying to avoid an incident similar to when Eden Hazard was sent off for kicking a ball-boy at Swansea last season. ‘I thought Cesar Azpilicueta was going to lose emotional control (with the ball-boy) and the kids are educated to do this but if a player hits a ball-boy then the person who educates them disappears and the player is in trouble for pushing or punching the kid. ‘I had a chance to get the kid and the kid was cute and I told him “you do this, one day somebody punches you”. We saw what happened with Eden.’ Meanwhile, Mourinho insists he was not celebrating Chelseas winning goal when he sprinted down the touchline, but was telling his strikers what to do next. He ran half the length of the pitch to reach his players but the Portuguese claims he was attempting to set Fernando Torres and Ba in position for the rest of the match.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:25:05 +0000
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