Row with medic was beginning of the end for José
League-winner sacked after string of defeats
JOSÉ Mourinho was yesterday sacked as Chelsea manager for a second time as his damaging public row with the club’s female doctor came back to haunt him.
The Portuguese boss, who famously dubbed himself The Special One, received his marching orders only seven months after winning the Premier League.
His extraordinary fall from grace was triggered by a very public spat with Chelsea’s 41-year-old doctor, Eva Carneiro, in the first League game of the season.
He was infuriated after she went on to the pitch to treat the club’s injured star player Eden Hazard as Chelsea were defending a counter attack.
Mourinho, 52, later labelled her ‘naive’. After the row intensified in the media, she left the club and later launched legal claims against both Chelsea and him personally.
Last night, it emerged that the spat is likely to limit the compensation Mourinho will receive for being forced out amid allegations that he breached his contract over the dispute.
There had been reports he could get as much as £40million after being sacked a few months into a new fouryear deal, but he is now likely to get much less. It is understood that as part of the settlement to leave by ‘mutual consent’, Mourinho will be paid ‘only’ £250,000 a week until he gets a new job, up to a maximum of £10million.
The row with Ms Carneiro seemed to trigger a collapse in Chelsea’s form, as the team went from title winners to losing nine of their first 16 games this season. It left the club hovering only one place above the relegation zone.
Mourinho became embroiled in a series of other rows with players and officials, leaving the club’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich with little choice but to act.
Mourinho had left Chelsea the first time after falling out with the famously impatient Russian oligarch, but the two appeared to have patched up their differences. Yesterday, Chelsea said Mourinho would always be welcomed back.
However, the 52-year-old – who was on £8.5million a year– has been left to reflect on the brutal nature of professional football as he prepares his family for Christmas without a team to run. He may even have looked back on his own childhood, when he learned how his father José Manuel Mourinho Felix – a former Portuguese international goalkeeper – had been sacked from a management job on Christmas Day.
Last night, Mourinho was understood to be preparing to fly back to Portugal to be with his 77-year-old father, who suffered a brain haemorrhage and two strokes in April.
In the days that followed the Carneiro controversy, Mourinho refused to retract his caustic comments about the ‘medical team’ being naive.
Ms Carneiro – said to be popular with many of the players – left the club the following month and consulted lawyers Mischon de Reya over making a claim for unfair dismissal.
During the row, the Premier League Doctors’ Group said her treatment had been ‘unjust in the extreme’.
The manager was also accused – but cleared – of using discriminatory language towards Carneiro. At the time of the row, the Gibraltar-born doctor thanked the public for their support in a Facebook message which attracted more than 42,000 ‘likes’. But it is thought to have angered Mourinho. Further problems came as Chelsea’s slump continued and Mourinho cut an increasingly morose figure both at Chelsea’s training ground and on match days. He was fined £50,000 by the FA in October due to his comments about referees, then given a onematch stadium ban.
In September, Mourinho looked less than impressed to be on the red carpet to receive a GQ Men Of The Year award supported by his 19-year-old daughter Matilde, whose low-cut dress left little to the imagination.
After a string of poor Chelsea performances, there was talk that he had lost the dressing room and it seemed the final nail in the coffin came when Chelsea lost 2-1 to Leicester City on Monday, after which Mourinho accused his players of having ‘betrayed’ his work.
He had ‘lost’ the dressing room