Jose Mourinho reveals the truth behind Mohamed Salah's Chelsea exit
Jose Mourinho insists it was Chelsea, not him, who decided to sell Mohamed Salah after he could not give him the minutes he needed at Stamford Bridge.
The Portuguese signed Salah from Basel in January 2014 after the Egyptian impressed in two Champions League group games against Chelsea.
Salah felt stiff competition from Eden Hazard and Willian for a starting spot, though, and went only to make only 19 appearances under Mourinho before going on loan to Fiorentina and Roma.
The move to Roma was made permanent in 2015 after Mourinho publicly claimed he saw Salah's future being 'elsewhere' and even went as far as saying it was 'better not to have Salah back'.
Since being sacked by Chelsea, Mourinho has changed his tune and been keen to remind the world that it was he who bought Salah and that it was the club who decided to sell him.
"Lots of things have been told that are not true," he told beIN SPORTS. "People try to identify me with the coach that sold Salah; I am the coach that bought Salah. It's completely the wrong idea.
"I played against Basel in the Champions League. Salah was a kid in Basel. When I play against a certain team, I analyse the team and the players for quite a long time and I fell in love with that kid. I bought the kid. I pushed the club to buy him and, at the time, we already had fantastic attacking players - [Eden] Hazard, Willian - we had top talent there. But I told to buy that kid.
"He was more a winger coming inside more than a striker like he is now. He was just a lost kid in London. He was a lost kid in a new world and we wanted to work him to become better and better and better but he was more in the idea that he wanted to play and not to wait.
"So we decided to put him on loan. To put him on loan on a culture that I knew well - Italy, tactical football, physical football, good place to play. Fiorentina is a good team without being a team with huge pressure playing for the title and we decided that move there.
"When the club decided to sell him, it was not me. I bought him, I didn't sell him, and my relationship with him was good, is good. I think that he doesn't regret that move because everything went well. Everything went well for him and the progression went well for him but, at that moment, he was just a kid with a huge desire to play every week, every minute and we couldn't give him it."