Chelsea vs Barcelona preview: 'Football without titles is nothing,' says Jose Mourinho

Hazard better than Ronaldo – and lucky not to break a leg last season

Jose Mourinho spent his summer break refusing interview requests, but now he is back to doing what he does best and is clearly making up for lost time.

The Chelsea manager has never been afraid to express an opinion or two and with the start of the new Premier League season just 11 days away, he had some high-profile names in his sights.

Cristiano Ronaldo, Manuel Pellegrini, Arsène Wenger and even Premier League match officials may all raise an eyebrow on hearing some of Mourinho’s views. No change there then.

The double triumph in the Premier League and Capital One Cup last season has certainly not dimmed his passion and he was in bullish mood ahead of the club’s final match of their pre-season tour against Barcelona in Washington on Tuesday evening.

For example, Mourinho’s exciting winger Eden Hazard has had a lot to celebrate over the past year. The triumphs with Chelsea aside, he also claimed the Footballer of the Year award from the Professional Footballers’ Association and Football Writers’ Association.

Yet as far as Mourinho is concerned, his displays in a Chelsea shirt also elevated him above Ronaldo as one of the world’s best footballers. Ronaldo scored 61 goals to Hazard’s 19, but at the season’s end the Portugal striker had no silverware to show for it.

Since leaving Real Madrid for Chelsea in 2013, Mourinho has done his utmost to speak about his former club, and Ronaldo, as little as possible. But Hazard’s form has provoked him to break his silence, which will surely cause consternation among his legion of critics back in Madrid.

Explaining his reasoning behind Hazard’s climb, Mourinho said: “Football without titles is nothing. I don’t like players or managers to win individual trophies without the team. Would I put Eden above Ronaldo? Last season, yes. In spite of the fact that Ronaldo was fantastic. He scored an incredible number of goals.

“Eden is coming with big status now and was voted one of the top 10 players in Europe last year. In my opinion he should be in the top three, not in the top 10.

“I think he is the best player in our country. The best player in England. You [the English media] voted him too, the best player in the English Premier League. Being that the Premier League is the top competition in the world, I think he is among the top players.

“But he has to be better and I told him that. How? By repeating these trophies and he needs a good Champions League. The normal tendency is for people to find another star. To find somebody new to get these individual trophies. But he has all the conditions to improve.”

Less worthy of acclaim in Mourinho’s mind are the footballers who he believes are deliberately trying to kick Hazard out of the game. The Belgium winger said at the weekend that he wants referees to provide more protection from rough treatment and Mourinho agrees.

“In the Premier League last season Eden was very lucky not to break a leg,” he said. “He could have been injured many, many times. He suffered more than a couple of nasty tackles and could have been in trouble. I saw lots of players breaking legs and ankles with less than that.

“I don’t want to say names because last season is finished and let’s have a fresh start. I would like more protection for him, but it’s beyond my control.”

During Chelsea’s time in North America, Mourinho’s mood on the whole has been upbeat. Even as we conducted this interview the morning after the champions suffered an embarrassing 4-2 defeat against a second-string New York Red Bulls, he was prepared to make a quick joke and laugh at his own expense. But when the names of two old foes, Manchester City manager Pellegrini and his Arsenal counterpart Wenger, came up, his expression quickly hardened.

The 52-year-old is often portrayed as the main villain when it comes to verbal sparring with these two, yet his rivals can give as good as they get.

In Pellegrini’s case, he is guilty of starting the jousting before a ball has been kicked, accusing Mourinho last month, among other things, of “always wanting to take credit for everything.”

With a sneer, Mourinho provided his right of reply. “When a manager is on holidays and still thinks about me, I have nothing to say,” he said.

“I don’t know [if he is obsessed with me]. In my holidays I did zero interviews. Since I left London, zero. Yes, I still think about football. But I don’t do any interviews, at least in that time. You are free of everything, questions, answers, controversy, interpretation, overreaction. You are free of everything. My holiday time – zero. If other guys use holiday time also for interviews, it’s their problem.”

While Mourinho’s disdain for Pellegrini is clear to see, it is still Wenger who gets him animated the most.

These two coaches have barely had a kind word to say about each other since Mourinho first arrived on these shores in 2004. Wenger’s desire to portray Arsenal’s business model as more virtuous and frugal compared with Chelsea’s, has often got under the skin of the Portuguese.

As far as the latter is concerned, Arsenal and Wenger have no excuses for their 11-year wait without a league title and should no longer be playing the role of underdogs.

In what should make the Community Shield between the two clubs on Sunday an even livelier affair, Mourinho said: “This is the easiest thing to do – I don’t do it. Get a calculator,” before making the noise of a cash till to emphasise his point.

“Every club is different, we don’t need to speak about them, but if you add up the amounts clubs have spent in the last three or four years I think maybe you will find a surprise.

“If you put Mesut Özil plus Alexis Sanchez, plus Calum Chambers, plus Mathieu Debuchy [total cost £100.5m] you will maybe find a surprise.

“They have just bought a fantastic goalkeeper [Petr Cech from Chelsea for £10m] and that is a position which is very important in a team. It’s a fantastic squad with good players, a fantastic goalkeeper, they are more than ready to be title contenders.”

It should be pointed out that Mourinho was not on the offensive throughout the 35 minutes allocated. He spoke of his plans to play with two strikers more regularly next season, providing hope for Radamel Falcao that he will get a chance to share the limelight with Diego Costa.

Still there was one last subject dear to Mourinho’s heart. Last term he was so driven to distraction by the performance of match officials, he even moaned there was a campaign against his side.

The standard of refereeing did hit a particularly low ebb in the top flight during the year and Mourinho feels there should be consequences for the man in the middle if he fails to perform. When asked if they should be suspended after a bad game, he said: “A rest. Even to take pressure off them.

“I’m not a ref specialist but [Howard] Webb is also part of it and he’s the best referee in the world. He must be a fantastic coach for them.”

And with that Mourinho was gone. It’s almost like he’s never been away.