Mourinho’s ‘the translator’ nickname returned in mocking tribute in the build-up to the first leg at San Siro.
The feeling was that Mourinho did not stand a chance against a Guardiola team at the height of its power, having won the Treble the previous season.
Already rife with drama and a gripping narrative, the first leg was played under a cloud of ash following the eruption of the Icelandic volcano after Barca was forced to take a 10-hour bus journey.
Whether that had any bearing on the match is impossible to know. But it certainly gave an already intriguing tie an air of theatre.
“When you get to the knockouts against a team like Barcelona, you have to win your match at home,” said Mourinho in a new BBC Sport documentary – How to Win the Champions League: Jose Mourinho.
That is of course easier said than done with Guardiola’s illustrious squad including Lionel Messi, Xavi, Sergio Busquets, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who Barca had acquired from Inter in a swap deal that season with striker Samuel Eto’o.
“Before the first leg, Mourinho told me ‘you’re going to play left-back and you will mark Messi’,” recalls former Inter defender Javier Zanetti in the documentary.
“I knew Messi from the Argentina team and he was the best player in the world. I followed Messi around and in every zone he went into, two of my team-mates came to pressure him to deny him space to make a difference.”
Mourinho’s tactics worked and Inter bounced back from an early Pedro goal as Wesley Sneijder levelled before the break then Maicon and Diego Milito assured a 3-1 victory at a rocking San Siro.
“It could have been more. A fantastic performance,” said Mourinho.
