Mourinho spells out Chelsea's grand plan

Chelsea, Jose Mourinho said after being appointed as the Premiership club's manager, "only have top players". "And," he added, "I'm sorry if I'm a bit arrogant, but we have a top manager, so we want top things for us."

Chelsea, Jose Mourinho said after being appointed as the Premiership club's manager, "only have top players". "And," he added, "I'm sorry if I'm a bit arrogant, but we have a top manager, so we want top things for us."

It is easy to believe, listening to Mourinho, that it was the now former Porto coach interviewing Roman Abramovich over the weekend, as those who know him in Portugal have half-seriously suggested and not the other way around.

"We spent two days trying to know each other well," Mourinho said yesterday of the gathering on the Russian billionaire's yacht Le Grand Bleu moored at St Tropez, along with the Chelsea chief executive, Peter Kenyon, and director Eugene Tenenbaum. "We were four together on his boat, looking to the sea but speaking only about Chelsea and ourselves."

And Mourinho loves to speak. He is clearly a man with a plan - a grand one at that - and was not shy to present his ideas. "I prepared a powerpoint document to show him [Abramovich] the way I like to work and the things that are important to me," Mourinho explained.

"It was the easiest way for him to study the document and to know really what I am and what I want. At the same time I could understand his desires. He wants to win. He had some very good moments when he smelled success. In the semi-final [of the Champions' League] he smelled for a few minutes being in a final. I know the taste of success very, very well and he wants the same thing as I want. He wants to win."

It is something Mourinho craves. It is his drug. "I don't want to lose it," he said of his astonishing successes over the past two seasons. "I don't want to arrive in 2010, 2012 with the same titles I have now. I want more. We have the same goals, the same ambitions, the same mentality."

For all his confidence, his self-belief, the word "we" figures largest in his vocabulary, "I don't like to use the words 'I', 'I am', 'I was', 'I won'," Mourinho said. "I prefer to say 'we' because alone you do absolutely nothing and that is what I said to Mr Kenyon and Abramovich. We cannot be separate. We must be together, think together as a team and this is the image I want to transmit to players. Not one player wins titles, a squad wins titles."

It is, indeed, his mantra and partly why he wants to have a smaller squad. "I'm a great defender of team spirit and team work and the first thing I have to promise to my new players is that I will look at the them exactly with the same eyes," he said. No favourites. He will also overhaul Chelsea's youth policy and restore their reserve team.

"In modern football with modern technology players can play a lot of matches," he said. What they need is good tactics. "It's important to have a style of play and to stick with it," Mourinho said. "Play like you want to play." In that first meeting with his new players he will not be "defensive". If he did, he said, "I think they [the players] will face me and say: 'This guy is a little bit disappointing'. I'll face them and I'll put everything on the table. We have to work with big things on our minds."

And by "big things" he means winning trophies. "I'm not asking for time, I'm not asking for limits," Mourinho said. "This is the type of question that doesn't put pressure on me. What I want to do is give my best, improve things. We should not be afraid to say that we want to win. We should not defend ourselves from outside pressure by saying we are only waiting for success in my last year of contract."

Mourinho recognises the challenge ahead of him "because of the power that football has in this country". It is why he is moving his wife, Matilde, and two young children, Jose Mario, four and Matilde, eight, here. It is why he has defied the death threats for daring to leave Porto. Mourinho's ambition, he said, was to win his first Premiership match on 14 August. His second? "To win my second Premiership match. And we keep going like this".

The Champions' League, he said, will be the strongest ever. "Every shark [big team] is there." It was galvanising stuff, burnished by a fierce determination - a perfect adversary for Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson. The latter was defeated in this year's Champions' League campaign and Mourinho offers another insight into his character over the spat with the Manchester United manager.

"I had to show in the press conference that the boss was not afraid," he said, protecting his players. But he speaks of his respect for Ferguson and "such important people". However there will also now be, in his own inverted commas, a "war". "You must know your opponents, their weaknesses and their strong points," he said.

A network of scouting missions will now start. He hopes that he will be able, as he does in Portugal, to "smell from the dug-out" the substitutions planned by opponents, so well will he know their methods. Not that he sees himself as, "one of the faces of the young managers in the world", adding: "Please don't call me arrogant. What I am saying is true because I'm a European champion. I'm not one from the bottle, I'm a special one."