It was Jose Mourinho who fired the first shots.
Ahead of Wednesday’s UEFA Champions League round of 16 second leg against Paris Saint-Germain at Stamford Bridge, he said: “I thought an English team would never be surprised by aggression, because of the aggression we have in our country.
“This season we’ve played against sides from the Championship in the Cups, against teams from League One, and Shrewsbury from League Two, but the most aggressive team was PSG.
“For me, that was a real surprise. With players of such quality, I was expecting more football and less aggression.
“A team with fantastic players was the team with a record number of fouls, was the team making foul after foul, was the team which stopped Hazard with fouls all the time.”
Typical Mourinho. His hobby, apart from stifling or overrunning opponents, is mind games. But like it has happened several times in the past, this time it came to bite him back.
It appeared to be going according to plan, after nine of his players surrounded referee Bjorn Kuipers and pressured him into sending off Zlatan Ibrahimovic, when a yellow card would have been just appropriate. It was disgraceful, but for the men in Blue, it was mission accomplished.
And that is where it ended.
There did not appear to be a follow-up plan. To run riot. To batter. To conduct waves and waves of attack. It seems Mourinho’s only strategy, was to try and wind up Laurent Blanc and his men. And nothing else. Like Thiago Silva said, he did not have enough respect for the Ligue 1 champions. Did not think they would have enough without Ibrahimovic to cause an upset.
For over an hour, they struggled to impose themselves on their visitors, until Gary Cahill slammed in the opening goal in the 80th minute. Now, a typical Mourinho side would have held on for a win. But somehow, they allowed former boy David Luiz rise highest to head in the equalizer and force the game into extra time.
By the time Thiago Silva was done playing both hero and villain in the 30 minutes, it was clearly one team that deserved to go through to the quarter-finals.
Fair play to Mourinho. At the end of the game, he held up his hands and admitted PSG outplayed his team.
But this was a tie he had every divine right to win.
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