Jose Mourinho has admitted that he once got round a two-match ban by hiding in a laundry basket so he could give a team-talk before a Champions League match.
Mourinho, sacked by Manchester United in December, told BeIN Sports how he skirted a touchline suspension on the eve of the 2005 quarter-final against Bayern Munich by getting the Chelsea kit man to help him stow away in the basket.
“I go to the dressing room during the day so I was there from midday and the game is seven o’clock. I just want to be in the dressing room when the players arrive,” the 55-year-old recalled.
“I went there and nobody see me. The problem was to leave after. And the kit man put me in the basket. It was a little bit open so I could breathe.
“But when he is taking it outside the dressing room, the UEFA guys were following and desperate to find me so he closed the box and I couldn’t breathe. When he opened the box I was dying.”
Mourinho also claimed modern footballers have such fragile egos that one Manchester United player asked the Portuguese coach not to criticise him in front of his team-mates.
