'He didn't want to wait' - Jose Mourinho opens up on Mohamed Salah relationship at Chelsea

Former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has claimed it wasn't his fault that Mohamed Salah didn't make it in England under him in 2014.

Salah, 31, has been a revelation at Liverpool since returning to English football in 2017 but his first move to the country failed to take off as he left the London club after just a year. He arrived from Basel in 2014 but played just 19 times before heading on loan to Fiorentina and Roma in consecutive years before making his move a permanent deal at The Yellow and Reds. He managed just two goals under the Special One but he faced a tough time given that there was a wealth of attacking talent at Chelsea including Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne who shares a similar success story after failing to make an impact at the club as a youngster.

Speaking in his latest interview on the The Obi One Podcast, he revealed that Salah was part of a few players who 'couldn't wait' and that they lacked the patience at a young age to be successful at Chelsea. "To be honest, they left because they wanted to leave. They left because they didn't want to wait.

"History proves that their option was good because they've had the careers they have and reached a high standard, but sometimes kids make decisions like that because they can't wait, or they don't have the patience to be calm and to wait for the right moment. Sometimes their career goes in the wrong direction."

"When people say I let Salah go, I say exactly the opposite. I bought Salah. I was the one who said 'buy that guy'. He was going from Basel to Liverpool, and I made a fight, I made a war, to make him come to Chelsea."

He also added that the standards at Chelsea were also a reason behind his inability to succeed at the time; the Blues were title challengers year in, year out and were constantly in the mix for trophies under their former owner Roman Abramovich. Plus, they had the likes of Oscar, Willian, Eden Hazard, Andre Schurrle and others which made breaking through extremely difficult for the Egyptian.

"Then comes the part when, to be a Chelsea player, you have to perform, or you need to wait. He didn't want to wait, he wanted to go on loan. And then Chelsea, at a certain point, decided to sell. He went to Fiorentina and Roma, and that was not me deciding to sell. I was saying let him go on loan if he feels he needs to play every minute of every game."

"When you are at Chelsea and you want to leave, go and another one comes," he said. "They were just kids who couldn't wait, and their careers say they were right, but it wasn't down to me. Probably other guys will say I pushed them out, but not them."