Mourinho: Real Madrid will not underestimate Galatasaray

Posted on April 3, 2013 by SoccerPunter

Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho has the opportunity to catch up with his former players in the Champions League quarter finals match against Galatasaray.

Mourinho was a manager of Didier Drogba and  Wesley Sneijder at Chelsea and Inter Milan respectively. He is aware of the danger the duo will posed to the nine-times European Champions, Real Madrid.

“They want to win Champions League and I want to win too,” Mourinho told the sports journalists on Tuesday.

Mourinho has a lot of respect for the Turkey Super Lig champions and expressed his admiration for Galatasaray‘s manager, Fatih Terim.

“He knows how to organise his team well, how to defend and work for a good result, but they will have no fear in coming here.

“They have players that have been in the best teams in the world and up front they have three players in (Burak) Yilmaz, Drogba and Sneijder that can do damage to any team.

“I don’t like to arrive at this stage as favourites.

“When I won the Champions League with Inter and Porto we weren’t favourites and when I have been with Chelsea and Madrid we haven’t done so.

“All the teams that get to the quarters arrive with great confidence and excitement and therefore I don’t like to talk about favourites.”

Mourinho confirmed Iker Casillas would not be in the squad despite returning to training in recent weeks but said they he had no other injury worries.

That means Raphael Varane and Fabio Coentrao should return after missing Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Real Zaragoza.

Varane meanwhile said that elimination at this stage of the competition would be a huge disappointment, but also warned against the threat posed by Yilmaz.

“Our goal is to win the Champions League, therefore if we don’t achieve that it would be a disappointment so we have to try and get the right result.

“I don’t think Galatasaray will have fear of playing against us. We are playing against a team that attack, I dont’ know if this will be a good thing but we have to do more damage than they do.

“We know that Yilmaz is a very good striker, that he has scored in many games and he is very fast. We need to pay attention to him and be very careful of his movement.”