Inter Milan star told Jose Mourinho "f*** you" after leaving him with Benitez
An Inter Milan player jokingly told Jose Mourinho "f*** you" when he left the San Siro... because his replacement was Rafa Benitez.
Mourinho won five trophies - including a Serie A, Coppa Italia and Champions League treble - during his two-year spell in charge of Inter. He left the San Siro to join Real Madrid in the summer of 2010, forcing Inter to replace him with long-term rival Benitez.
The Spaniard's time in charge of Inter did not go to plan, as he was sacked after just 25 games in charge. As such, it's no surprise that Inter legend Marco Materazzi was devastated when Mourinho left Inter within days of the club's third European Cup triumph.
Mourinho was widely expected to leave Milan for Madrid after the 2010 Champions League final between Inter and Bayern Munich. It turned out to be the perfect goodbye for the former Chelsea boss, as Diego Milito scored a brace to give Inter a 2-0 win.
The final was ironically held at the Bernabeu, Mourinho's future home. After the game, the manager was filmed leaving the ground. As his car started to drive away from Inter's team bus, Mourinho asked the driver to stop, got out and walked towards the bus.
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Standing outside was Materazzi and the two shared an emotional goodbye. A sobbing Mourinho hugged the player, and fans have always wondered what they spoke about in that moment. Materazzi has now lifted the lid in an interview with Italian Football TV.
Marco Materazzi struggled to build a similar relationship with Rafael Benitez (Getty Images)What do you make of Marco Materazzi's admission? Let us know in the comments below!
"I told him "f*** you" because he was leaving me with Benitez," joked Materazzi.
Mourinho is renowned for having strong people-management skills. It's one of his main strengths as a manager, as he is close to a number of his former players - including Materazzi.
The World Cup winner added, "Mourinho was special, he knew the names of all our children and our wives. Nobody else had ever done that for me. For me it was not a big surprise, but for my wife, when he met her and said, Hello Daniela'. It was [her name]."
Benitez, meanwhile, is a completely different manager. Former Liverpool goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek wrote in his autobiography, "He [Benitez] has great knowledge of football... His problem is that he’s not a great 'people person' so always encounters problems when managing a group because he is very cold and hard-faced in how he makes decisions."
Dudek added, "He kept a distance between himself and his players - like there was an invisible wall there - but it didn’t stop him from being a genius of a coach... He did everything so coldly, almost inhumanely, because he saw things as business."
Former Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant told talkSPORT in July 2021, "He wasn’t a great man-manager. His skills in that department were lacking... I felt it was difficult to approach him, have a conversation and maybe talk about certain situations on and off the pitch."
Former Liverpool defender Glen Johnson told talkSPORT in April 2020, "The worst [people-manager]? Hmm… I’d probably say Benitez, but it’s a difficult one, because he was good and the worst at the same time. He never tries to be your friend, that’s what I mean by saying he’s probably the worst man-manager, but he does it in a clever way."
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