Jose Mourinho said on Monday he would like to coach Real Madrid, though only after completing his contract at Chelsea.
"Every coach would like to do it," he said. "It would be an honor to work in a club like Real Madrid."
Mourinho, who has guided Chelsea to the last two Premier League titles, has a contract through 2010. There has been speculation the Portuguese coach could leave the London club after this season and replace Fabio Capello at Madrid, but Mourinho said he was staying at Stamford Bridge.
Contract
"I say clearly no [to moving] until 2010 because I have a contract with Chelsea," Mourinho said. "I want to stay at Chelsea. I am in love with Chelsea. I am in love with English football."
Chelsea have already won the League Cup this season and are second in the Premier League, nine points behind Manchester United. The Blues are still competing in the FA Cup and Champions League.
Mourinho spoke after returning from Spain, where he watched Valencia draw 3-3 with Osasuna. Valencia hosts Chelsea in the first leg of the quarterfinals of the Champions League on April 4.
Meanwhile, Ghana midfielder Michael Essien signed a new five-year contract on Monday that will keep him at Chelsea through 2012.
The 24-year-old Essien is in his second season at Stamford Bridge. He has played in all but one match this season, making a total of 46 appearances in a variety of positions in both midfield and defense.
`Really Happy'
"It didn't take me long to decide to sign," Essien said. "I am really happy because I came here to stay a long time. I really work hard in training and do everything to succeed. I have the ambition to win a lot of trophies for the club."
Essien joined the Blues from Lyon in 2005 for what was then a club-record fee, reported to be ?24.4 million (US$47 million), and helped the club win its second Premier League championship in a row.
Chelsea is currently in second place, nine points behind Manchester United, but still in contention in the FA Cup and Champions League.
"It is great to have somebody like Michael, who has already made a huge contribution, commit for another five years," Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon said. "We spent a summer getting him, it wasn't easy, and it is nice to be on the next step."
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier