Master of media manipulation Jose Mourinho appears to have started the mind games before Benfica travel to Newcastle United next week.

That’s if his latest comments from Portugal are anything to go by, as the likes of Correio da Manhã and A Bola cover him today.

Benfica travel to Newcastle on Tuesday in matchday three of the Champions League, league phase. They head into the game after an international break in which most of their star men were away playing for their countries around the world.

“Newcastle United? It’s difficult”

That was felt on Friday evening, as they ran out 2-0 winners over Chaves. Mourinho elected to leave players out for that game. It was a comfortable win for his side, but he was seemingly left frustrated with a lack of training time beforehand.

“I can say that I trained yesterday [Thursday] and the day before [Wednesday],” he said.

“On the other days, one player arrived, then another. We did some of the things we trained, but at a slower pace than I wanted, both in terms of passing and in terms of finding an inside game.”

The training turnaround for Newcastle on Tuesday is even tighter, and it...