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VERY SPECIFIC QUESTION No.17: Does Jose Mourinho Google himself?

They say you should never read your own reviews - and having occasionally glanced upon some of the not-very-flattering comments that greet my articles on this very website, I can see why. But for someone as high profile, and with as many detractors, as Jose Mourinho, this advice would seem especially wise. In the modern age, football personalities are among the most popular targets for scrutiny, criticism and downright vitriol. It’s interesting, therefore, to learn this week that Mourinho does pay attention to what people write about him.

The Chelsea boss made a bizarre, apparently unprovoked dig at former Blues left-back Graeme Le Saux during the press conference for Tuesday’s Champions League match against Maccabi Tel Aviv. Asked if any of his players had been reluctant to travel to Israel amid security fears in the wake of the Paris attacks, Mourinho replied: “I didn’t have a single problem within the squad. I didn’t have a Graeme Le Saux.”

He was referring to Chelsea’s last trip to Israel 14 years ago, shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks, when Le Saux was among six first-team players who opted out of a match against Hapoel Tel Aviv due to similar safety concerns. The others were Marcel Desailly, William Gallas, Emmanuel Petit, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Albert Ferrer, so Le Saux was hardly the most memorable figure in the bunch. And even if he had been, the group’s decision not to play in that match was gracefully accepted by the club back in 2001.

At the time of New York’s Twin Towers being destroyed, Mourinho was the manager of Portuguese minnows Uniao de Leiria. It seems unlikely that he was paying particular attention to Graeme Le Saux’s reaction to the tragedy, yet here he was dragging it up 14 years later. And we can only find the explanation for this by venturing into the darkest recesses of Jose’s psyche. Or more specifically, his internet browsing history.

Within it, you will almost certainly find an article from the Times on 15 October about Mourinho’s handling of the Eva Caneiro affair, written by none other than Graeme Le Saux. “What concerns me most is the impact Mourinho’s behaviour may have throughout the whole game. Mourinho doesn’t seem to have reflected on the damage he’s done,“ are a couple of choice lines from the former England defender’s analysis.

What’s most interesting is not that Mourinho stewed on this for a month before choosing his moment to publically belittle Le Saux in a bitter and completely irrelevant outburst, but rather that he read the article in the first place.

It takes a certain type of celebrity to read their own reviews. You can imagine that Kanye West and Katie Hopkin do it all the time, whereas the Queen and Mick McCarthy never would. Mourinho evidently falls into the former category.

As well as his Le Saux swipe, he makes frequent reference to the media’s coverage of Chelsea, whether by noting their delight in the club’s failures or accusing them of complicity in a football "conspiracy” against the Blues. It all adds to the suspicion that Mourinho voraciously consumes everything that is written about him, despite the conventional wisdom that this is almost always unhealthy. Unless you’re a totally zen, chilled out surfer dude rather than a savagely intense football manager.

If reading one article by Graeme Le Saux irked Mourinho to such a degree that he investigated the player’s life story in order to dredge up something he did 14 years ago, logging on to Twitter would surely send him into a raging meltdown. Maybe it already has.

Arrogance is one of Mourinho’s greatest qualities as a manager, but it’s a dangerous trait in the internet age. Self-Googling is a scourge of those prone to vanity, egotism and paranoia. Roman Abramovich doesn’t need to sack Mourinho; he just needs to regulate his data allowance.

Follow @darlingkevin on Twitter

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