"Since there's no final on Saturday, our next game is against Porto next Wednesday. When we arrive in Seixal [on Wednesday], everyone will go to their rooms. I hope the players sleep as well as I do, which is to say that they don't sleep at all. That's what I wish for them. That they don't sleep and instead think a lot, like I'm going to think."
"On Thursday we can start talking, which isn't what happened in the locker room," Mourinho said. "In the locker room it was a monologue, and monologues don't work for me; I like to have a dialogue with the players. "We'll talk about the differences between the first and second halves and prepare in the best way possible for the game against Porto."
Benfica lost the League Cup semi-final 3-1 to Braga and finished the match with ten men after Nicolas Otamendi was sent off. Jose Mourinho arranged for the squad to remain at the club's Seixal training base with consecutive training sessions scheduled before the next fixture. Mourinho said he wanted players to sacrifice sleep in order to think carefully about the defeat. The result ended an 11-game unbeaten run under Mourinho, who returned in September and has won 14 of 23 matches this stint. Benfica travel to Porto in the Portuguese Cup quarter-final and sit third in the Primeira Liga, ten points behind Sporting.
Read at www.bbc.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]