Following Chelsea’s 2-0 Community Shield loss to Manchester City on Sunday, Willian confirmed that FC Barcelona made a strong bid to acquire him, but his commitment remains to Stamford Bridge.
“I always made it clear that what I wanted was to stay in the club,” the Brazilian said. In addition to Barcelona, Willian has also been strongly linked to Real Madrid and Manchester United this summer. In the case of the latter, the 29-year-old expressed a desire to reunite with one of his former Chelsea bosses in Jose Mourinho.
“Mourinho talks to my agent all the time, he says ‘bring him, bring him.’ He has never called me, but he always sends me text messages,” Willian said in a very wide ranging interview with ESPN Brazil.
“Mourinho is the best manager I’ve ever worked with. We have a good relationship, we are friends.
“Sometimes we talk, we text, we send messages to each other via WhatsApp. He is a great manager, I really enjoyed working with him. I hope I can work with him again someday.”
That’s a great endorsement for Mourinho’s leadership and managerial abilities; and for a communications technology platform too!
While Willian had a lot of nice things to say about playing under one of his former Chelsea managers, his experience under a different Blues boss, Antonio Conte, wasn’t so pleasant (but we all already knew this with the Instagram posting after the FA Cup).
“I hope he (new Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri) is not like Conte,” Willian said in the same interview. “No, I’m kidding!”
“For me, Conte was a manager very difficult to work with. His philosophy, his way of dealing with things is very complicated. There were a few games … Sometimes we just don’t understand. You’re playing very well, then you get substituted. I do not understand.”
“There were two times when I got substituted and I went straight to the locker room. It was hard to work with him.”
“But in life, we learn from these kinds of things. We learn so much from difficulties. There were two years when I stayed on the bench in so many games, coming in later in the game. But this is in the past. The important thing now is to talk about Sarri.”
“From what I heard, I am sure he is a great manager, who does a great job with the team. I have high expectations for working with him.”
Willian also gave a colorful explanation as to why he covered up Conte’s face in the FA Cup triumph team photo, on that aforementioned Instagram post. “My daughter was playing with my cell phone and she ended up putting those emojis over Conte!” he responded while laughing.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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