Galatasaray manager Roberto Mancini has claimed that former Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho was able to win the Champions League only with the team he assembled at the club. Mancini spent several years at Inter Milan and he was extremely successful at the Italian club.
He won several league titles in a row in what is regarded as the club’s finest period in their history. However, it has been since debated that Mancini was able to achieve this success only because of their rivals failing at the perfect moment.
This has been argued because of the club’s failure to do well in Europe during the Mancini regime. Mourinho was brought to the club with the aim of doing well in Europe and he achieved impressive success in only his second season with the club.
He managed to win the treble including the Champions league, which the club lifted after a gap of more than 40 years, in 2010. Mourinho and Mancini come up against each other for the first time since the Portuguese enjoyed a lot of success at Inter Milan. The two will be in the opposite dugouts when Galatasaray take on Chelsea into Champions League.
Mourinho won the treble with several of the players Mancini brought and the former Manchester City boss has raised this issue ahead of the Champions league tie.
“Mourinho won the Champions League because he took a good team. He took a team that, like Manchester City, I had built. A team that had a strong mentality. When I went to Inter, they played very bad football and we changed this. To win a Champions League you should be lucky. [The] Champions League is a different competition but a strange one. Strange because you can win your group in October, November, December and, after maybe February everything can change,” said Mancini.