the independent paper report? lets hope its true.

[WaltonRed]

Liverpool make a last ditch attempt?

 

Mourinho may start exodus from Porto to Chelsea

By Jason Burt and Conrad Leach

08 May 2004

 

Roman Abramovich is to poach all the backroom staff from Porto and at least two to three players as part of the deal to take Jose Mourinho to Chelsea.

 

The Russian billionaire has earmarked €70m (£48m) to buy the play-maker Deco, the right-sided midfielder Costinha and the right-back Paulo Ferreira to help smooth Mourinho's move to Stamford Bridge after the Champions' League final against Monaco on 26 May. Such signings would raise a doubt over the future of several expensive Chelsea players such as Joe Cole, Juan Sebastian Veron, Jesper Gronkjaer and Glen Johnson.

 

Even though the Porto coach is undoubtedly set to agree a £2m-a-year deal, he has reservations about the wisdom of joining Chelsea. Mourinho has made it clear he would prefer a move to Liverpool, for example, and, on Thursday afternoon, the Merseyside club tried to contact the 41-year-old and his appointed agent, Jorge Mendes, to discuss a move. Tottenham Hotspur are also monitoring the situation.

 

However, at the time Mourinho and Mendes, were holed up in Les Ambassadeurs, the Mayfair club of Abramovich's advisor, the Israeli "super-agent" Pini Zahavi. They were there to discuss terms.

 

Abramovich has made it clear to Mourinho - as per his demands - that he will employ his assistant manager, Baltemar Brito, the goalkeeping coach Silvino Louro and the fitness coach Rui Faria. More than that Mourinho has made it clear that he wants to take some players with him also. Chief among them is the naturalised Brazilian Deco, who will appear for Portugal in Euro 2004 and has been a talisman for Porto for the past three years.

 

Because of the scale of the deal, Abramovich and his advisors hope to steam-roll Mourinho into agreement. He undoubtedly wants to work in England and has hankered after a move to the Premiership ever since he was employed as a translator for Sir Bobby Robson a decade ago.

 

At the same time Porto will drive a hard bargain. They have already accused Chelsea of illegally approaching Mourinho and they claimed they were going to make an official complaint to Uefa, the European governing body, although that does not appear to have happened. Money, it seems, talks.

 

Claudio Ranieri, the man Mourinho is set to replace, was back-tracking yesterday just 72 hours after he admitted his stewardship at Chelsea had come to an end. "I would like to finish my job," Ranieri said ahead of today's encounter with Manchester United. "I have another three years on my contract. Why cannot I finish my job? I would like to finish my job but I'm not the owner.

 

"I hope I am here in August. I believe I will be here. Me and my players have made a very good job this season. If someone new comes in it will not be easy to improve this team. I started the foundations and the ground floor is ready. I would like to put the windows in the first floor."

 

 

 

 

He will probably go to chelsea as it appears we may have acted to late but you never know.lets hope he is true to his word and would prefer to manage the reds.If not, it proves maybe that the board have decided to get rid of ged once and for all.I fucking hope so....

[Liverpoolway]

What part of it? :P

 

Carvalho would be the solution to the lack of pace in the Liverpool defence btw, so it would be a shame to see him play for Chelskji. He's skillful as well as pacey and tough, and over the past two seasons he's proved himself a world class central defender. Him alongside Hyypiä would be awesome....

[Maldini]

Well Mendes is agent to a few Porto players too so I'd say the chances are we were getting in touch regarding a player rather than Mourinho

[Guest Boitol]

Well Mendes is agent to a few Porto players too so I'd say the chances are we were getting in touch regarding a player rather than Mourinho

 

Then they wouldn't contact Mendes or Mourinho they would contact Porto.

[dave u]

Well Mendes is agent to a few Porto players too so I'd say the chances are we were getting in touch regarding a player rather than Mourinho

 

 

Disagree. Houllier isn't keen on latin players. 'IF' the board were contacting the agent over a player I doubt it was on Houllier's say so.

[dave u]

Then they wouldn't contact Mendes or Mourinho they would contact Porto.

 

Maybe they did that, and then were following it up by ringing the agent?

 

Who knows. We'll find out soon enough though.

[WaltonRed]

lets hope jose is enroute,although i doubt it very much and can see looney arse mumbling to himself as norwich score to beat us 1-0 on the opening game of next season.My pliers did me proud,it was the ref,the wind,the linesman,the offside......

[Original202]

Well if he stays, don't expect us to start playing well until after christmas. Theres euro 2004 remember.....

 

Still not sure about Mourinho, but maybe we need to take a bit of a risk on a young, relatively unproven and inexperienced manager?

 

My money is still on Toshack though ;-)

[ScouseAndy]

I think we have the opprotunity to attract a really top class manager now. Apart from leading one of Europe's biggest clubs out of decline it seems we will be getting money from thailand and possibly the CL.

 

Bit of a dream job coming here at the moment