Jose Mourinho last night maintained that his attention is on leading his Chelsea side into the next stage of the Champions League this season, with the Portuguese refusing to discuss the achievements of Roberto Di Matteo during his time in charge of the Stamford Bridge club.
The Italian is now manager of Schalke and will welcome his former club to Gelsenkirchen tonight.
Di Matteo managed to lead Chelsea to Champions League success during a short time as manager, succeeding where Mourinho has failed, albeit he has won the competition with both Porto and Internazionale. Chelsea are also unbeaten under Mourinho in all competitions this season.
It is maintaining that form in Germany which was of the greatest concern to the Portuguese last night, rather than a reunion between some of his team and former manager Di Matteo.
"I am not here to speak about Roberto Di Matteo, I am here to speak about the game tomorrow," said the Chelsea manager. "The reality is we need points. I think this team is in one state of its evolution where to go into the Europa League would be very bad. A team gets better and the evolution is faster when you play in the best competition against the best teams.
"Maybe we drop into Europa League. If we lose two matches we go into the Europa League. It makes no sense to talk about quarter-finals or anything else. We need points to play in the Champions League and that is why we are here, we are here to get points."
Mourinho derided a tournament such as the Europa League when it was won by his predecessor at Chelsea, Rafael Benitez, and it is clear that he does not want to be leading his team into Europe's second-tier competition.
Indeed, with a calendar bustling with fixtures heading into December and the new year, the 51-year-old wants qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League secured at the earliest opportunity.
"We have two matches, but obviously it would be better for us to qualify [tonight]," he added. "We have so many matches in December that if we can avoid a crucial match against Sporting to decide qualification and that pressure, it would be very good.
"The players are playing very well. Nothing comes for free, or with luck. Even our draws were matches we were closer to winning than losing."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article