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Football

20th Jan 2015

Jose Mourinho says that he had chance to sign Di Maria and Falcao but turned them down

Times are tough at the Bridge...

Sean Nolan

The Portuguese boss had the chance to sign the Manchester United duo but he couldn’t meet the demands

In a new book, Jose Mourinho has revealed that he had to turn down the offer to sign Angel di Maria and Falcao this summer, mainly as he couldn’t meet their wagesdemands. In a new book about Jorge Mendes, agent to the Chelsea boss and the two footballers, Mourinho speaks of how he had to reject the chance to take the pair to Chelsea.

“Jorge told me Di Maria and Falcao are his players and he has to find solutions for them,” Mourinho said in the book The Key to Mendes, published in The Sun today.

“But if Chelsea doesn’t have the financial capacity to pay eight, nine or €10m a year, because of [financial] fair play, of course Mendes has to think about his players.

“We couldn’t bring Falcao or Di Maria because I didn’t want to, either. I can’t have a player earning €10m when others earn three, four or five. That would have caused an explosion.”

Falcao’s rumoured wage is a shocking £260,000 a week while Di Maria cost almost £60m to bring from Real Madrid to Old Trafford.

We doubt everybody in the Chelsea dressing room is on the same salary but it is nice to see that the Special One cares so much about equality of pay.