Mourinho's mind games backfire as Chelsea fail in the heat of battle

Jose Mourinho has spent the last three months talking conspiracies and campaigns, only for referees to remain resolutely unhelpful. The suspensions served by Diego Costa and Nemanja Matic suggested his words might actually be doing Chelsea more harm than good.

Wednesday night began with him getting exactly what he wanted, only to end with his team getting exactly what they deserved.

Chelsea are out of the Champions League and they only have themselves to blame.

Mourinho knows a drum that keeps banging will eventually be heard by someone. The day before this match he suggested that referee Bjorn Kuipers might be wise to look out for Paris Saint-Germain’s “aggression” at Stamford Bridge. The Dutchman took just 31 minutes to oblige in spectacular fashion. 

Zlatan Ibrahimovic appeared to have begun pulling out of a challenge he and Oscar had both lunged in for when his shin crashed against that of the Brazilian, who was sent spinning across the turf clutching his leg. That might have explained why Kuipers immediately reached for his top pocket, though the nine – yes, nine – screaming Chelsea players who immediately surrounded him baying for blood might also have had something to do with it.



Throughout the opening half-hour the home side had been noticeably keen to highlight any examples of PSG physicality, with one fairly innocuous-looking foul on Cesc Fabregas prompting Mourinho’s first riled charge from the dugout and word with the fourth official in only the ninth minute.

Ibrahimovic’s dismissal transformed a fairly sedate Stamford Bridge into a cauldron of agitation, with every collision prompting howls of derision from both sides. Oscar might have seen red himself before half-time, when Mourinho wisely replaced him with the calmer Willian.

This is the kind of battlefield Mourinho feels most comfortable when the stakes are at their highest and the opponents at their most talented, with the kind of brazen disregard for aesthetics that once prompted Real Madrid sporting director Jorge Valdano to label the Portuguese’s football philosophy “s**t on a stick”.

But on this occasion it served only to spark something in their opponents.

Chelsea duly took control of possession, though PSG’s sense of grievance refused to let them lie down and accept their fate. The first element of Mourinho’s pre-match plan had worked perfectly but his players were now in limbo.

A man up at home they felt obliged to attack, but an away-goal lead gave them something to lose. Every spell of possession carried with it a whiff of trepidation and had Edinson Cavani not fluffed his lines in front of the Shed End for the second successive year when played clean through with the scores goalless, the Blues might have paid a high price far earlier.