Chelsea vs Hull City: Players do not need me to provoke them now, says Mourinho

Chelsea’s season is going so well that Jose Mourinho does not feel that he has to provoke reactions from his players any more.

The manager provided a rare insight into his motivational methods at yesterday’s press conference, saying that he has no need for what he calls “confrontational leadership” this season, because the players are performing as he would like.

Chelsea have already won the Capital One Cup and with victory at Hull City tomorrow they can move closer to their first Premier League title since 2010. The team are maturing and improving and Mourinho said, as things are going to plan, he “just needs to be present” rather than making the public criticism he often uses to spark a reaction.

“‘Confrontational leadership’ is basically when you are ready to provoke your players, to try to create some conflict with the intention to bring out the best from them,” he explained. “To criticise a player in the media – in front of you. Trying to provoke a reaction from him of anger, of not being happy with his manager, of trying to show that I am not right.”

Chelsea’s improvement is likely to bring them two trophies and means that Mourinho can be more relaxed around his players, who are mature enough to motivate themselves. “Last season I needed ‘confrontational leadership’ a few times, but I didn’t think there were many of them ready for that,” he said. “This season I don’t need it because things are going in the direction that I want.

“Obviously you can say ‘but you lost in the Champions League, or you lost against Bradford’. But globally, generally, the way they work, the way they behave, the way they live together, their motivations, their responsibilities, their frustrations, the way they react to the negative moments, the way they react to the positive moments, the absence of complacency: all this is going well.

“So I just need to be present. I don’t need to be a big leader, or even try to find strategies as a leader.”

This was a strategy Mourinho used when he managed Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Internazionale in 2008-09. Mourinho made a point of not celebrating Ibrahimovic’s goals, much to the Swedish striker’s frustration. “He was so self-confident, he had such a big ego that, for him, to do these things, to score fantastic goals, was something normal. If it’s normal for him, it’s normal for me. For him, to perform at a high level was something normal. Was it to annoy him? No. To provoke? Yes.”

Mourinho was publicly very critical of Eden Hazard last year when Chelsea were eliminated from the Champions League by Atletico Madrid after his error. Mourinho attributes his excellent form this year to a combination of factors. “I think it was an accumulation of experiences, of feelings, probably of feedbacks – from me, from you, from everybody – that made him go in a certain direction, that made him obviously mature. I don’t think it was with me that particular episode.”

This week the Chelsea website published an article about how few penalties they have been awarded this season, which Mourinho described as “an objective article” and “just numbers”. Despite what he perceives as unfair decisions since he famously said there was a “campaign” against Chelsea in December, Mourinho claimed he did not regret his comments.

“I never regret when I speak from my feelings,” he said. “I never care with the consequences.”