“They left because…” – Jose Mourinho on allowing two world class stars to leave Chelsea | OneFootball

Jose Mourinho has answered questions about Mo Salah and Kevin De Bruyne enough times to have his story pretty straight.

The fact that two players who went on to be true Premier League greats subsequently were allowed to leave Chelsea on his watch is always held against him, but speaking on Jon Obi Mikel’s podcast, Mourinho made it very clear that he had been in favour of keeping both of them.

He explained that it was the players who wanted the moves, and there wasn’t much he could do to stop them:

“To be honest, they left because they wanted to leave. They left because they didn’t want to wait. Their history proves that their option was good, because they did the career they did. They have reached a high standard. But sometimes kids, they do decisions like that because they cannot wait.

“When people tell me you let go Salah go, I say exactly the opposite. I bought Salah. I was the one who said buy that guy. He was going from Basel to Liverpool and I made the fight to make him to come to Chelsea.

“Then, yes, then comes to the part where to be a Chelsea player you need to perform of you have to wait. He didn’t want to wait, he wanted to go on loan and then Chelsea at a certain point decided to sell him. He went to Fiorentina and then Roma and then Chelsea decided to sell, that was not me deciding to sell. I was saying let him go on loan if he feels he needs to play every minute of every game.

“With Kevin it was very similar. He went to pre-season in Asia, we went to Indonesia and Thailand and Kevin should go on loan to a German club and I told that club no, I don’t want him to loan I want him with me. He stayed with me and he started the Premier League playing, in the starting 11. After that game we played the Super Cup against Bayern and he didn’t play that game.

“The next day, he wanted to leave! And then we played the second game of the season at Old Trafford against Manchester United, I think we drew 0-0. He was on the bench, but he played some minutes and it was not enough for him. So he wanted to leave.”

It’s all in the past now anyway. We remember both players at Chelsea, and we remember not being too bothered when either left, in particular Salah. It’s pure revisionist history from a lot of fans who pretend they knew they were going to end up being great.