Several jokes have been made this season about Jose Mourinho’s decision-making in relation to some departures during his second spell as Chelsea manager.
The top two players in England this term, Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne, were deemed surplus to requirements at Stamford Bridge while Mourinho was at the helm, while Romelu Lukaku was also allowed to move to Everton in that period.
All three have since developed into world class talents and a reunion with Lukaku has taken place at Manchester United, costing the club more than £75 million.
De Bruyne has been busy pulling the strings for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City while Salah is currently valued at around £200 million by Liverpool after one of the all-time great debut seasons.
Salah was crowned PFA Player of the Year last week and his goalscoring streak shows no signs of stopping, with talk of Ballon d’Or recognition come the end of the year.
And given the Egyptian’s emergence as a potential rival for Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Mourinho has been forced to answer several questions about why he seemingly didn’t rate Salah at Chelsea. .
Mourinho is adamant that the decision to let Salah move to Italy, firstly on loan to Fiorentina and subsequently to Roma, was not his.
“People say that I was the one that sold Salah and it is the opposite,” Mourinho told ESPN Brazil.
“I bought Salah.
“It is the opposite. I was the one that bought Salah. I was the one that told Chelsea to buy Salah. It was with me in charge that Salah came to Chelsea. But he came as a young kid, physically he was not ready, mentally he was not ready, socially and culturally he was lost and everything was tough for him.
“We decided to put him on loan and he asked for that as well. He wanted to play more minutes, to mature, he wanted to go and we sent him on loan to Fiorentina, and at Fiorentina he started to mature.
“Chelsea decided to sell him, OK?
“And when they say that I was the one that sold him it is a lie. I bought him. I agreed to send him on loan, I thought it was necessary, I thought that Chelsea had wingers… Some of them are still there like Willian, [Eden] Hazard and all those players already in a different level.
“So the decision to send him on loan was a decision we made collectively, but after that, the decision to sell him and to use that money to buy another player wasn’t mine.”
