Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has revealed that he doesn’t want Liverpool to give his team a guard of honour, reports the Daily Star.
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Should the Blues beat Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge on Sunday they will be crowned Premier League champions with three games to spare. With a match still to play against the Merseyside club it could end up that they are given the traditional congratulations against Liverpool.
This would be especially embarrassing for the Reds, who had notions of challenging for the title at the start of the season and have also not won the top flight for a quarter of a century. Since the loss of Luis Suarez they also don’t look likely to be in the mix for a while.
However, Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has already made it clear that he will make his players take part in guard before the encounter if Chelsea are already champions, reported the Liverpool Echo. It is this artificiality of players being forced to do it that Mourinho doesn’t agree with.
The 53-year-old said: “I don’t like it. They did it for us at Real Madrid. But you can show respect for the winner in many different ways. If some of the opposition don’t want to be there and are there because somebody tells them to, then maybe it’s a bit artificial.”