Football: Villas-Boas not into mind games

LONDON:

Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas insists he has no intention of playing mind games with Sir Alex Ferguson and the rest of the Premier League’s top bosses.

Villas-Boas will go head–to–head with Ferguson for the first time today when Chelsea visit Old Trafford for the kind of high stakes fixture that often triggered verbal sparring between managers when his mentor Jose Mourinho was in charge of the Blues.

Villas-Boas, however, claims that he prefers to keep the peace whenever possible. “I don’t see any reason to play mind games,” he said. “If you react to things people say it might look as if you are vulnerable to pressure.”





Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th, 2011.