Frank and friends get Jose's message

14 April 2012

In his programme notes, the great man had teased us: "You don't have to try and find me, you can't." Yet we could see Jose Mourinho everywhere on another Champions League night of compelling theatre at Stamford Bridge. He was there in spirit and he was there in his men's spirit.

Whether he was also there in the cupped ear of Rui Faria - or maybe that woolly hat was just too damned itchy for the fitness coach on a mild evening - we don't ever need to know, but it was certainly up for daft and hilariously fevered debate during the evening.

You could almost imagine Mourinho's mischievous glee. " Concentrate on the pitch," was his imperious command to the media. Easier said than done with all that note-passing, whispering on the bench and shuttling up and down the tunnel. Then there was that finger-wagging aimed at them by the fourth official.

Normally, Mourinho cannot help but utterly dominate our attention when patrolling the bench - the players even wanted masseur Billy McCulloch to dress up in the master's trademark coat and scarf in case they got withdrawal symptoms - yet watching his supporting cast, headed by Steve Clarke and Baltemar Brito, emerge from his shadow was instructive.

It was like seeing half-a-dozen passionate Mourinhos doing their stuff. When Didier Drogba came off, the bench rose one by one to high-five with him or slap him on the shoulder. Without Mourinho, somehow the unbreakability of the team bond both inside and beyond the rectangle, perhaps the man's greatest achievement in SW6, seemed even clearer.

Of course, the question of whether anyone was wired for sound was irresistible. Brito denied any contact, the club said they had no interest in discussing it and UEFA didn't seem bothered. Anyway, how could anyone prove it or, indeed, police it? Perhaps there was a case for a, er, Frisk.

Maybe, too, there was something in Felix Magath's suspicion that Chelsea would "play their socks off " for Mourinho out of a sense of a perceived injustice. And the overriding message of the night seemed to be to let him know just how appreciated he was - "Let's show our love for the gaffer," as John Terry put it.

The fans did so with umpteen renditions of their Jose hymn to the strains of La Donna e Mobile, while Frank Lampard afterwards saluted news of Mourinho's contract extension offer with the observation: "We love the manager, I think he loves us, the fans love him and we want him to stay."

Apart from all this love in the air, there's trust, too. Mourinho appears to possess absolute faith in all his charges. According to Terry, the boss left them with the message that they were "big enough personalities" to do what was necessary without him.

Then, wherever he ended up watching the TV last night - and a club that likes to keep everything in the family these days still weren't telling - he watched them all prove his thesis with Lampard, in particular, offering a secondhalf performance of such splendour that no phone instructions could have fashioned it.

Mourinho's tactical preparation was probably spot on if Bayern's surprising discomfort under aerial bombardment was anything to go by. Yet what was most impressive was the players' ability to think on their feet, to change the course of a match that seemed to be slipping away after Bastian Schweinsteiger equalised.

It wasn't just Lampard's inspirational brilliance. Or Drogba's refusal on a difficult night to give up one more lost cause in the air, a persistence that set up a goal. Or the marvellous Claude Makelele being there yet again in exactly the right support spot to assist on Lampard's second. It was about all of them accepting and thriving on personal responsibility.

Chelsea were desperately unfortunate. If it had not been for Michael Ballack's last-second theatrics, a con job in the box under the lightest of brushes from Ricardo Carvalho, the tie would be as good as dead.

Yet now with Roy Makaay, ruled out late yesterday with more aggravation from his thigh injury, likely to be back next week, an early goal for Bayern in the Olympiastadion would still make it a treacherous affair.

Terry told how, amid all the flak, Mourinho last weekend organised a birthday treat for a trainingground steward, inviting him on the coach for champers with the players. "That shows what a great man the gaffer is," he reckoned.

So one suspects that wherever he is next Tuesday - let's just imagine him enjoying a litre in Munich's Hofbrauhaus, TV on and phone at his side - Mourinho will sense just how keenly they all want to win this for him.

Frank and friends get Jose's message

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