Mourinho is angry that his players are being forced to play just two days after they touched down from their mid-week travels to Istanbul
Jose Mourinho today demanded Premier League bosses
start helping English football's Euro-travellers.
Chelsea boss Mourinho is angry that
his Blues have to face Fulham tomorrow having only returned from Istanbul in
the early hours of Thursday morning.
Mourinho's players had a gentle warm-down
at Cobham on Thursday afternoon and then had a light session at Stamford Bridge this afternoon and
the Portuguese echoed Frank Lampard's call for protection of the players.
"We all prefer to play game after game after
game," said Mourinho. "But we all want to play game after game with
conditions to recover, with equal conditions for every team, and no sense that
a team has a privilege in the choices.
"I feel every team in the same country should
have the same privilege to be a little bit protected in relation to European
matches.
"It makes the players' job difficult, not my job.
I can play a match every day, so it's not a problem for me - or the people who
make the fixtures!
"I don't run, they don't run. But it's difficult
for the players.
"When a player like Frank Lampard, who has a
right to speak and has played an unbelievable number of seasons and matches in
this club, and over 100 times for England, and is not the kind of player who is
trying to give an opinion all the time, when a player like him, and a man like
him, expresses his feelings about that, this country should listen.
"I repeat, it's not a problem for my legs, or
those who make those decisions. It's a problem for the players' legs.
"We're not just talking about what they do in
Portugal and Spain. It's what they do in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Russia, Greece
as well. It's everyone.
"I can accept that we couldn't play last week on
Friday. But what we don't accept is why we're playing Saturday and not Sunday,
why a team who plays on Wednesday in the Champions League has to play on the
Sunday before and not the Saturday.
"I'm nobody, and my legs are fresh from the last
match. I didn't sleep a lot, but my legs are fresh. But for my players, it's
different."
Mourinho thanked Fulham chief Felix Magath for having
the "honesty" to concede the scheduling favoured the Cottagers.
He added: "Not many people are honest in the way
they analyse things.
"I have to praise Magath because he was the first
one to say this is a different match because Chelsea have this situation in
midweek, the special situation that the game was so far, and we don't play on
Sunday.
"Sunday would be difficult but we play Saturday,
which is more difficult. Magath knows that. He has experience at this level,
having played European competitions for many years with other clubs, so I have
to praise his honesty."
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