Former Chelsea, Inter Milan and Barcelona striker, Samuel Eto’o, has revealed that Jose Mourinho allowed him to deliver the pre-match team talk, ahead of the 2010 Champions League final.
Eto’o had joined Inter the summer after winning the 2009 Champions League with Barcelona at 29.
The former Cameroon striker, scored 16 goals and provided nine others that season and netted the crucial away goal at Chelsea in the quarter-final stage.
Eto’o emerged as one of Mourinho’s trusted lieutenants and the Portuguese valued his leadership off the pitch.
“Mourinho did something that few others would,” Eto’o told Sky Italia about the pre-match build-up at the Bernabeu.
“He gave his team talk ahead of the game, then said: ‘Now Samuel will tell us how we’re going to win’. I have to thank him for that.
“In the final, you win if you step onto the field to win and not to go out and play. Each of us thought of how much we suffered to reach that point, winning against Chelsea and Barcelona, to get to a final Inter hadn’t been in for 40 years.
“I said that I had played many finals but that this was the most special. We had to do something for the people, for the Inter population who deserved it.
“I said: ‘Either we win the Champions League, or we die trying. We’ve got to die on that pitch to bring home the cup or we’ll die because we won’t return to Milan with the cup’. Fortunately, it all went well.
“I turned around after my speech and Julio Cesar was crying.”
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