CHELSEA BOSS JOSE MOURINHO insists he was right to sell Kevin De Bruyne to Wolfsburg as the player was “crying every day to leave”.
The Belgium international has established himself as one of the brightest attacking talents in the Bundesliga since leaving Stamford Bridge in January 2014, and Manchester City have been pushing hard to bring the player back to the Premier League.
But Mourinho is adamant that Chelsea made the right call to allow De Bruyne to leave as he does not believe the 24-year-old would have blossomed in the same way had he been forced to stay in west London.
With De Bruyne, if you have a player knocking on your door and crying every day he wants to leave, you have to make a decision. At that time, Chelsea did well,” Mourinho told reporters.
“If De Bruyne stayed here, not happy and not motivated, and we’d sold him after a year, we’d have got less – 50 per cent less than we sold him for. So we sold him. At that moment, it was very good business.
“If somebody comes and pays for him what somebody would pay for Messi or Cristiano, it looks from the eyes of the world that it’s bad business from us.
But, if he was at Chelsea and not at Wolfsburg, he wouldn’t have reached this level. It was like a wall, a block. He was not ready to compete. He was an upset kid, training very bad. He always said he had trained well in his life, but he needs motivation to train well by playing every game. Andre Schurrle a bit the same.”
Mourinho also believes that the decision to oust De Bruyne has been vindicated by the rise of Eden Hazard, who has flourished during his three years with the Blues.
“If you think it [De Bruyne's sale] is my mistake, then it’s my mistake that Eden Hazard is worth more than £100 million,” he added.
“What I cannot do is bring us up to a certain level and then not play him. If I don’t play Hazard and play De Bruyne or Andre Schurrle, they would have been playing for Chelsea, but Hazard wouldn’t.”
