Mourinho: now the enemy, but still special

Jose Mourinho, the Special One, returned to his old haunt at Stamford Bridge yesterday, but this time as the "enemy". Inter Milan's comfortable defeat of his old charges put Chelsea out of the Champions' League, but the press coverage is dominated, as of old, by Mourinho himself.

Looking as suave as ever - and surrounded by reporters at the end of the match - the Portuguese manager admitted that beating his old team was an emotional experience. "My people will always be my people," he said. "But today I was the enemy. And the enemy won. That's life."

His gift of the gab undiminished since Chelsea days, he added: "Yesterday someone asked me if I would still be special if I lost here. But today I'm not so special for Chelsea supporters who will probably never forgive me.

"It was difficult coming to my home as an enemy, but that is what happened. I exchanged SMS messages with John Terry yesterday [and] told him one of us would be sad today. That's life."

Today's newspapers are asking why Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich ever let Mourinho go – and Mourinho had words for his old boss: "Roman is a very intelligent person and because of that he's not the same person that he was when he arrived in football.

"Probably he thought it would be easy when he first arrived in football... He knows it's not easy now. He knows now how to read a game, understand a game, analyse the game and knows his team lost against a side who deserved to win. He's a man of class, so he will accept this defeat because he knows Inter were the best team."

And Mourinho continued to hint about a possible return to English football. Before the match he had said "to come back to English football" was one of his three remaining career goals – alongside winning the Spanish championship and coaching his national team – and after the game was over he added: "If I come here again I could coach another English team and come here as an opponent again."

Inter's victory may have been his "perfect" revenge on Abramovich, but Mourinho's goal celebrations were restrained, with no real sense of gloating. "I celebrate a lot in the dressing room," he explained.

As for why Inter had won, his simple answer showed his characteristic uber-confidence, but was hard to disagree with. "This was a perfect game and perfect games do not happen very often... Sometimes you win because you are the best team. Sometimes you win because you were the best team from the first to last minute. That team was my team..."

But there was no mistaking the star of the evening – and he wasn't on the pitch. Mourinho appeared on the touchline pre-match to a soundtrack of the Rainbow classic Since You've Been Gone, with its lines: "I'm outta my head, can't take it. You cast the spell, so break it". As Oliver Kay in the Times observed, "The concern for everyone at Stamford Bridge is that Mourinho's spell, far from being broken, has been reinforced.

"And if you think that Terry and his team-mates will not be pining for Mourinho this morning, it is to underestimate the extent to which he remains, in their eyes, the Special One." ·