The Mourinho Champions League return with Real Madrid arrives on Tuesday night, and the fixture computer could hardly have scripted it better. Los Blancos open the league phase at the Santiago Bernabeu against Inter Milan — the club with whom Jose Mourinho lifted his second and, so far, last European Cup, on this very pitch, in 2010.
Mourinho refuses the redemption script
The obvious storyline was handed to him at Valdebebas on Monday, and he pushed it straight back. Asked whether he had come back to Madrid to settle the European debt left over from his first spell, the Portuguese was blunt.
“No. I’ve been at Real Madrid in two different periods. I finished my time there in 2013. We won what we won and lost what we lost. We gave it our all. And that was it,” he said. “But this has nothing to do with the past. These are two different moments in Real Madrid’s history. In 2010, we hadn’t reached the quarter-finals and hadn’t played a semi-final in many, many years. Now we’ve won six Champions Leagues.”
He is right about the ledger. As Marca notes, Mourinho reached three consecutive semi-finals with Madrid without ever making a final, and La Decima arrived the season after he left. Florentino Perez has since credited him with putting the club back on the road that produced the six that followed.
What the Mourinho Champions League return means for Chivu
On the other bench is Cristian Chivu, a defender in that 2010 Inter side and now the coach of the reigning Serie A champions. Mourinho was warm without being sentimental about it.
“Right now, this isn’t a normal match for me. Afterwards, it will be,” he said, per Managing Madrid. “During the game, I won’t be thinking about the past. Chivu will always be one of my own. I’m very happy for him, for what he’s achieving. I’ll greet him before and after the match.”
Chivu returned the compliment and then some. “He is a special person I was lucky to meet in my life, who gave me important help at a difficult moment,” the Romanian told reporters, as carried by Mundo Deportivo. “He is a winner who knows how to get things across at the right moment, and few know how to do that like him. He has won everywhere he has been.” He was rather less romantic about the venue: Inter, he pointed out, have not won at the Bernabeu in 60 years.
A patched-up midfield for matchday one
The romance does not solve Mourinho’s selection problem. Arda Guler, Eduardo Camavinga and Bernardo Silva are all suspended for the opener, which strips the engine room bare. Aurelien Tchouameni and Thiago Pitarch trained with the group at the weekend and are back in contention, though Tchouameni has not played a competitive match since July. Rodrygo, Ferland Mendy, Eder Militao and Raul Asencio all remain sidelined.
That points towards Federico Valverde dropping alongside Jude Bellingham in a double pivot, with Vinicius Junior and Kylian Mbappe leading the line. Inter have a problem of their own: Serie A’s player of the season, Federico Dimarco, misses out with a knee sprain picked up against Napoli. For the full broadcast details, see our guide to Real Madrid vs Inter Milan kick-off time and TV channel, and our earlier piece on the suspensions hitting Mourinho’s midfield.
‘I want to win’
Madrid arrive off the back of their first defeat of the season, at Real Betis, and Mourinho left nobody guessing about his priority. “I want to win. I could say I want to play well, but I don’t want to play well like against Betis and lose,” he said. “We’re in an eight-game stretch with the goal of qualifying. And I think we’re going to do it.”
Inter captain Lautaro Martinez, fresh from a double in a comeback win over Napoli, was similarly unbothered by the history. “I know the story and what happened, but today we are many years on from that,” the Argentine said. Kick-off at the Bernabeu is 21:00 CEST.
