Although the economy has performed better than feared, the fear itself seems not to have fully dissipated. I’ve just come back from a whistle-stop tour of the US, heading backwards from the west to the east coast before finally heading home over the weekend The US economy feels vibrant The data have, for the most part, been buoyant Yet people still appear to be anxious. Renegade rebels marched towards the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu yesterday, plunging the region into a fresh round of chaos and threatening the Democratic Republic of Congo’s fragile peace process. We must be together, think together as a team and this is the image I want to transmit to players. “I prefer to say ‘we’ because alone you do absolutely nothing and that is what I said to Mr Kenyon and Abramovich We cannot be separate. We have the same goals, the same ambitions, the same mentality.”For all his confidence, his self-belief, the word “we” figures largest in his vocabulary, “I don’t like to use the words ‘I’, ‘I am’, ‘I was’, ‘I won’,” Mourinho said.

“I don’t want to arrive in 2010, 2012 with the same titles I have now I want more. “I don’t want to lose it,” he said of his astonishing successes over the past two seasons. In the semi-final [of the Champions' League] he smelled for a few minutes being in a final. I know the taste of success very, very well and he wants the same thing as I want He wants to win.”It is something Mourinho craves It is his drug. He is clearly a man with a plan – a grand one at that – and was not shy to present his ideas.

“I prepared a powerpoint document to show him [Abramovich] the way I like to work and the things that are important to me,” Mourinho explained.”It was the easiest way for him to study the document and to know really what I am and what I want At the same time I could understand his desires He wants to win He had some very good moments when he smelled success. “We were four together on his boat, looking to the sea but speaking only about Chelsea and ourselves.”And Mourinho loves to speak. “And,” he added, “I’m sorry if I’m a bit arrogant, but we have a top manager, so we want top things for us.”
It is easy to believe, listening to Mourinho, that it was the now former Porto coach interviewing Roman Abramovich over the weekend, as those who know him in Portugal have half-seriously suggested and not the other way around.”We spent two days trying to know each other well,” Mourinho said yesterday of the gathering on the Russian billionaire’s yacht Le Grand Bleu moored at St Tropez, along with the Chelsea chief executive, Peter Kenyon, and director Eugene Tenenbaum. Chelsea, Jose Mourinho said after being appointed as the Premiership club’s manager, “only have top players”.