Jose Mourinho's Warning to Real Madrid Players: 'Do Not Betray Me'

Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho appeared on Bet it Drive Show. The mechanics are simple: an interview, but with a different format, since both the interviewer and the interviewee - in this case, Mourinho - are in a moving car, driving around, in this case, the streets of Madrid.

The Portuguese coach began by mentioning: "I return because the club wanted me to return, but the way they addressed me also influenced it. I left Real Madrid in 2013, I think, and since then we have always maintained a close relationship. I left on excellent terms with the club, the president, and the board; that is why we were always in contact."

Later, he recalls his contact with the club at the end of last season, when he was still coaching Benfica. "They told me: 'We know you, you know us; you know the club, the culture and the people. We know how you work. We want you to rebuild the team. We need you. We need you to rebuild and to start a prodigious decade again like the one the club lived through. We need you; we need a person with your profile.'

I was happy at Benfica, happy in Portugal. I had left my country so many years ago that, when I returned to Benfica, I felt very comfortable. But Real Madrid is Real Madrid. Everyone at the club understood that my return meant a great opportunity. So, again, we left Portugal on good terms; I could not be happier or have greater motivation than I have now."

To finish, Mourinho shared one of his most important mottos as a coach. "Do not betray me. When I say 'do not betray me,' I mean football, of course. Do not betray me, and I will always be there for you. No matter what. You are a footballer 24 hours a day. That is also the question. You train two or three hours a day, but you are a footballer 24 hours a day.

Everything affects your work: what you eat when you are not at the club, what you drink, how you sleep, and even parts of your private life. Unfortunately, a footballer cannot ski or ride a bicycle; if he does - and there are those who do it secretly from the club... The contract does not matter to me. What matters to me is how you approach your work.

If you fall off the bicycle, maybe you miss three matches, or something worse: you can break a leg or suffer a bruise that prevents you from performing at the highest level. You have a group of friends; you are young, single, and 22 or 23 years old; your friends go out to clubs on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights, but you cannot go. You can only go out the night after the match, as long as you do not have another match in three days, something that can happen."

Now, the coach has the big task of bringing titles back to Real Madrid's trophy cabinet. That hasn't happened in the last two seasons, when they have seen both the LaLiga and Champions League trophies slip through their fingers. This has annoyed fans, since they are used to seeing their team win and will not accept more years like this.

Currently, the panorama looks complicated: a highly powerful Barcelona is already 6 points up, with a highly competitive team, Raphinha in great form, Lamine Yamal confident, and a backbone of world champions such as Rodri, Dani Olmo, and Pau Cubarsi, among others.

Real Madrid keeps waiting for its most important stars, such as Vinicius Jr., to wake up. In addition, it has seen how recently its key players, such as Kylian Mbappe, Brahim Diaz, Federico Valverde, and Ibrahima Konate, have been injured before and during the international break. They're waiting for them to recover soon and be available for Oct. 25, when they visit Camp Nou to try to beat their archrival.