Jose: I turned players into stars

The Chelsea manager was talking to his official biographer, Luis Lourenco, for a thesis that has not yet been published when he said it was only because of his arrival at Stamford Bridge that Terry, Lampard and Didier Drogba had become world-class players.

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"Who were Lampard, Terry and Drogba two years ago?" he said. "They were certainly not world stars.

"And in this moment who are they? They are like Shevchenko or Ballack."

While the exact timing of the conversation with Lourenco remains unclear, it is bound to be interpreted as another clear message to Roman Abramovich.

The rift between Mourinho and Abramovich has cast serious doubt over his future as Chelsea manager but the Portuguese warns of the consequences of dismissing him this summer.

"Leadership can be felt in the smallest of things, in the smallest details, with a look from, or just the presence of, the leader himself," he said.

"I have players who say to me that when they do a drill in which I do not take an active part that my absence makes all the difference. For a period at Chelsea I deliberately stopped acting as a leader and thought 'Let's see what's going to happen'. I came to the conclusion that it is not possible for me to step away. Even if the group is mature and strong after two, three, four years' work, my leadership has to be applied every day."

The impact he has on individual players is, in his mind, considerable. "Until now my stars were stars that grew with me," he said. "We grew at the same time. When I coached Porto nobody was a star and everybody ended up rising up to the national level.

"At Chelsea the players that were there already were not world-class stars and we also ended up growing in that direction. We won together. There was a big growth."

But the boasting did not end there. It is only because of the success he masterminded that established superstars like Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack now play for Chelsea.

"People say I modified my transfer strategy because I bought Shevchenko and Ballack," he said. "I did not modify my transfer strategy. I bought stars for the environment of stars.

"I would never have bought Shevchenko and Ballack for a team without stars, for a team that had won nothing, for a team of players without titles, for a team of that would be built around those two figures and 20 Joe Nobodies.

"In this moment they are stars but I also have Lampard, who won the silver ball, was the second best player of the world last season and I have Terry who was the best player in England. I have starters from different national teams, and finally, we were twice champions."

Tottenham boss Martin Jol is confident of springing a surprise at Stamford Bridge in today's lunchtime kick-off.

Jol said: "I'm sure if we can be reasonably fit we'll give them a hell of a game. After seeing the Chelsea match against Valencia they will make a few decisions on their players because you can't play them every game.

"Because they have to win next week to go to the next round, maybe they will leave out three of four players.

"The Champions League is probably the most important thing for them now."