Jose Mourinho knows a little about the sensibilities of goalkeepers. He grew up with one, after all.
His father, Felix, a keeper whose club career stretched over almost two decades with Vitoria Setubal and Belenenses, had to snatch at his opportunities for honours: No league titles, a few cups, and one international cap.
Well, just about one official cap. Felix Mourinho got a few minutes as a late substitute for Portugal in a friendly tournament.
Mourinho took on a situation at the beginning of Chelsea’s triumphant Premier League season which threatened to test the sensitivities of two fine goalkeepers. One, Petr Cech, is a Mourinho ally from years back; the other, Thibaut Courtois, is likely to be a Chelsea fixture for the best part of the next decade.
Read more:
Five games that won Chelsea the Premier League title
Chelsea and a very Mourinho-esque title win
At the outset of the season, Mourinho said he felt comfortable with a squad that contained two world-class internationals in a position where only one could ever be selected.
“Any decision to put Petr, or Courtois, on the bench, is not a problem for me,” the manager said in August. Note the terms of address: Cech by his first name, familiar; the young Belgian still on surname terms.
Suffice to say that during the last eight months, the manager has come to know Courtois as Thibaut, even as “Thibaut the Terrific”. He has given his manager several reasons to refer to him in glowing terms. His athleticism and reaction speed, tied to the great physical assets of his 1.98-metre height and long reach, have a large share of responsibility for Chelsea owning one of the best two defensive records in English football’s top tier.
This time a year ago, Courtois was vexing Mourinho. The Belgian was in his third season on loan from the London club, who had acquired him as a teenager from Genk and identified Atletico Madrid as a good place to let him develop. He went straight to Spain.
It was an astute move. So essential did Courtois, 23, become to Atletico’s rise that he was part of the team that won the Spanish Primera Liga title last year, and who beat Chelsea in the Uefa Champions League semi-finals 12 months ago. Mourinho had sought a way to prevent the keeper from playing against his parent club but found none.
“For me, it was logical Courtois had to be back,” Mourinho said after that. “It would make no sense to have such a fantastic young goalkeeper and not have him.”
Expectation was that Cech, now 33, would leave at that point. But Mourinho values squads with depth, and that extends to the awkward position of back-up goalkeeper.
Mourinho has ensured Cech played enough matches to qualify for his fourth Premier League winner’s medal of a long and distinguished Chelsea career that probably will end this summer. He ensured Cech stayed this extra year, initially as second choice, because he knew that if Courtois failed to adapt to the English game, or sustained a long-term injury, he wanted standards not to drop.
Courtois, bar the odd positional error, has adapted. He is less vocal than Cech, a man 10 years his senior, and will inevitably need time to develop the second-nature understandings with stalwart defenders such as John Terry and Branislav Ivanovic that Cech nurtured through season after season working behind them.
Mourinho appreciates that, and he understands goalkeepers are a special case, with specific temperaments. His experience dealing with two senior No 1s still near the peaks of their careers has certainly been different at Chelsea this season than it was in his final year coaching Real Madrid.
There, he controversially dropped his club captain, and Spain’s, Iker Casillas, replacing him with Diego Lopez. It was a bold step that cost Mourinho support in the dressing-room and in the grandstands at the Bernabeu.
His treatment of Cech, and Courtois, has been a good deal more sympathetic and positive.
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2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Women%E2%80%99s%20T20%20World%20Cup%20Qualifier
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Tightening the screw on rogue recruiters
The UAE overhauled the procedure to recruit housemaids and domestic workers with a law in 2017 to protect low-income labour from being exploited.
Only recruitment companies authorised by the government are permitted as part of Tadbeer, a network of labour ministry-regulated centres.
A contract must be drawn up for domestic workers, the wages and job offer clearly stating the nature of work.
The contract stating the wages, work entailed and accommodation must be sent to the employee in their home country before they depart for the UAE.
The contract will be signed by the employer and employee when the domestic worker arrives in the UAE.
Only recruitment agencies registered with the ministry can undertake recruitment and employment applications for domestic workers.
Penalties for illegal recruitment in the UAE include fines of up to Dh100,000 and imprisonment
But agents not authorised by the government sidestep the law by illegally getting women into the country on visit visas.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
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Blackpink World Tour [Born Pink] In Cinemas
Starring: Rose, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa
Directors: Min Geun, Oh Yoon-Dong
Rating: 3/5
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
POWERWASH%20SIMULATOR
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Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
