Maradona backs Mourinho for Euro glory with Real

Former Argentina coach Diego Maradona on Friday backed Jose Mourinho to end Real Madrid’s recent Champions League hoodoo and become the first coach to win the competition with three different clubs.

“He will give Real Madrid the Champions League” title, said Maradona after attending a training session at the club’s Valdebebas complex just outside the Spanish capital.

“You have to give Mourinho time so that the players can understand what he wants. That’s what happened at Inter and the Italians won the European Cup after a more than 50-year gap.

“If they wait for Mourinho, I am convinced he will give Real Madrid the Champions League in a short space of time,” Maradona told Real’s website.

Mourinho won his first European title with Porto in his native Portugal in 2004 before moving to Chelsea, where, while unable to succeed in Europe nonetheless delivered back-to-back English Premier League titles – the Londoners’ first in half a century.

He then joined Inter and last May joined Ernst Happel and Ottmar Hitzfeld as the only coaches to win the European Cup with two different sides as the Milanese pulled off an unprecedented season treble which also included the Serie A title and Italian Cup.

For Maradona, “Mourinho is above criticism – his methods are sensational. He allows the players to enjoy themselves but when he has to use the iron fist he does so and when he has to gee up the team on the field he knows how to do so better than anybody.”

Maradona also said he believed that since the Portuguese had arrived last summer, he had created “a great camaraderie among the players (which) is down to Mourinho. The training that I saw everyone wanted to play. This is the healthy competition (for places) which Mourinho is creating at Real Madrid.”

The club have won a record nine European Cups but their last came eight years ago when French maestro Zinedine Zidane scored a sizzling winner against Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen.

Since then, other ‘galacticos’ such as David Beckham and Ronaldo have come and gone without the club excelling in European competition – Real have not even reached the Champions League semi-finals since.

Maradona said he was looking forward to a finely-balanced November 29 ‘clasico’ between unbeaten Real and Barcelona, who trail the capital club by a single point after 11 games.

Real’s Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo meanwhile trained with strapping on a calf strain suffered in Wednesday’s friendly international win over Spain in Lisbon.

The injury may keep the former Manchester United star out of Saturday’s meeting with Athletic Bilbao.