If Inter Milan were intending their trip to Beijing for last week’s Italian Super Cup to be a China charm offensive, coach Jose Mourinho was obviously not kept in the loop.

The accepted form for European club officials on pre-season trips to China is to politely praise everything local and talk up the footballing potential of the world’s most populous nation.

After Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Lazio in the traditional Italian season curtain-raiser between the Serie A champions and Cup winners, Mourinho departed from the script.

The post-match news conference got off to a bad start when the local interpreter expressed his delight at Lazio’s victory and invited Chinese media to ask Mourinho difficult questions.

Matters did not improve when Mourinho, who earlier in the week had described the Bird’s Nest stadium — China’s pride and joy — as “so-so”, arrived on the podium.

The first question from state broadcaster CCTV, suggesting he had been forced into letting new signing Samuel Eto’o play a full 90 minutes, was answered politely.

The second, from a local newspaper reporter, asked why Lazio, playing on the same pitch and in the same searing heat that Mourinho had previously complained about, were able to win.

“After the first two questions, I know why Chinese football is so rubbish and why China has won gold medals in so many sports but not football, because the journalists are so unprofessional,” the Portuguese replied.

Later, a reporter from state news agency Xinhua asked whether the match had further convinced Mourinho of the need to strengthen his midfield with a playmaker.

“After your questions it seems that my team played a horrible match,” said the former Porto and Chelsea boss. “The conclusion is that you don’t understand a thing, because all the questions are based on the result. This is not football. If we talk about the result, it was 2-1 to Lazio. If we are talking about the match, then we have to say one team played, the other was lucky. This is football.”

Mourinho, who got his break in management after working as a interpreter for English coach Bobby Robson, was unsurprisingly lambasted by the Chinese sports media.

Web portal qq.com was typical, listing “Mourinho’s seven sins in China”.

“1. Losing the match, 2. Being arrogant, 3. Insulting journalists, 4. Sneering at Chinese football, 5. Despising the Bird’s Nest, 6. Refusing to attend a charity dinner 7. Losing his temper at the Silk Market,” it said.

Mourinho would not be the first tourist to lose his cool at the Silk Market, the central Beijing shopping centre famous for its faked goods where scores of shop assistants aggressively vie for custom, but he denied accusations of an eighth sin.

A statement posted on Inter’s Chinese language website on Monday read: “Jose Mourinho today firmly denied the reports that he refused to meet China’s coach Gao Hongbo.

“After Inter’s training in the Olympic Sports Centre in the afternoon of Aug. 5, Gao met and talked to Mourinho … The two coaches agreed to meet again the next day but because of the preparations for the Super Cup, they did not meet in the National Stadium.”

The journalist who had asked the second question in the press conference was not impressed with Mourinho. “I don’t think he’s the special one,” she told me as we left the stadium.

 Picture by David Gray

If your first reaction on hearing about the Samuel Eto’o-Zlatan Ibrahimovic deal was “How much?” then I can assure you you weren’t the only one.

To land Ibrahimovic, who is due to be presented this evening at the Nou Camp, Barcelona will not only hand over the Cameroon international striker but will also give Inter Milan a reported 45 million euros and the loan, for one season, of Aleksandr Hleb.

According to Marca, who are not exactly fans of Barcelona it must be said, that makes the total cost of the Swedish striker at least 87.5 million euros (with Eto’o valued at 35 million, and Hleb for a season at 7.5).

So how on earth is Ibrahimovic worth close to 90 million euros? How on earth is he valued at double Eto’o, one of the world’s top strikers?

Ibrahimovic is the sort of striker coaches love. Tall and strong, he is happy playing with his back to goal and therefore gives the team a target man. He scores goals too, of course, and he has contributed to six league title-winning campaigns with Ajax and Inter.

But Eto’o is no mean player himself. The Cameroon international is also strong but relies more on his skill and explosive pace to get past defences. After signing for Barcelona in 2004 he proved to be the missing piece in the puzzle, joining forces with Ronaldinho to get the team back to title-winning ways.

Eto’o scored not only in the 2006 Champions League final win over Arsenal, but also in this year’s victory over Manchester United and he will leave Barcelona with a record of 130 goals in five seasons.

I think it goes without saying that Ibrahimovic is not really worth 40-45 million euros more than Eto’o, so it looks like yet another case of Barcelona letting a player go at far less than their market value, and for reasons other than simply their value to the team.

It happened with Schuster, Stoichkov, Romario, Kluivert, Rivaldo and Riquelme and now coach Pep Guardiola says he’s happy for Eto’o to go for no reason other than a “feeling”, even thought they’re getting next to nothing for him.

Why is it so many big names seem to leave Barcelona in such circumstances? Why have they never mastered the art of selling?

And looking to the future, can you see Ibrahimovic living up to the inflated price tag the Spanish press have put on him?

PHOTO: Barcelona’s new signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic of Sweden poses in front of a FC Barcelona sign at the team headquarters in Barcelona, July 26, 2009. REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino

It would be among the biggest swap deals ever in soccer but there is a long way to go before it becomes reality.

Inter Milan and Barcelona may have agreed to the transfers of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Samuel Eto’o (plus a bit of cash for the Italians on top) but the players have yet to agree terms and that looks trickier than might be expected.

Manchester City pulled out of talks with Eto’o after becoming frustrated while media reports say he is asking for astronomical wages.

Ibrahimovic on the other hand is reportedly the most paid player in the world and Barca will have to be careful not to destroy their wage structure if they want to recruit him.

Furthermore, Barca president Joan Laporta met Inter’s Massimo Moratti earlier in the close season and they both agreed a swap deal was not a good idea because they still wanted to keep their strikers.

The situation has changed since then, with Ibrahimovic repeating a desire for a fresh challenge and Eto’o looking more like departing, but in soccer money talks and there could still be more twists.

Sweden’s Ibrahimovic, away in the U.S. with Inter which could complicate matters, seems more keen than the Cameroon international. Ibra would definitely be more fed up if he agreed terms with Barca but the swap collapsed because Inter would not meet Eto’o’s demands.

Then Inter’s Jose Mourinho, eager to know who his main striker will be as soon as possible, would have to use his famed motivation skills to make Ibra commit fully again to the Serie A champions.

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic (L) passes the ball around Club America’s Juan Carlos Silva during the second half of their World Football Challenge at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California July 19, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Inter Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic is the ultimate soccer enigma.

He scores goals for fun when playing Bologna, Chievo and Palermo but often goes missing against AC Milan, Manchester United or Liverpool (which is why he is never in the running for the top awards despite the incredulity of Inter fans).

The tall-yet-skilful attacker has been racking up Serie A titles but the Champions League seems a distant prospect and with all due respect to Sweden, he is not likely to win any honours in international football.

If you want someone to outrageously chip the keeper, Ibra is your man, but don’t expect him to always score that tap-in.

Judging how much these sorts of players (Antonio Cassano? Dimitar Berbatov?) are worth is very tricky, especially after he admitted at the end of last season that he fancied a new challenge.

Inter president Massimo Moratti slapped a 70 million euro price on his head which scared off Barcelona and Real Madrid. If Kaka cost 67, can Ibra really be worth more?

Without a bid forthcoming, the forward returned to pre-season training with Inter last week saying he was “happy”. Moratti then said the player was off the market.

Now English newspapers say Manchester United and Chelsea have come sniffing. Chelsea’s reported offer would be 50 million plus Deco and Ricardo Carvalho, two players Inter coach Jose Mourinho wants.

A move is suddenly back on the table but like everything with Ibrahimovic, any transfer is bound to be complicated, especially as he has just jetted off on a U.S. tour with Inter.

What’s your bet on where Ibra will end up? I reckon he’ll still be at the San Siro come September…

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrates after scoring against Lazio in their Italian Serie A soccer match at San Siro stadium in Milan, May 2, 2009. REUTERS/Stefan Rellandini

Inter Milan coach Jose Mourinho has interrupted his holidays to remind soccer fans what they have been missing in the month since the end of the season.

The outspoken Portuguese, whose side are favourites for a fifth straight scudetto this term, has far from mellowed while lying on the beach.

Here’s his latest amusing rant from the Gazzetta dello Sport about the discipline of different nationalities in soccer.

“The Brazilians are the most difficult and ill-disciplined. If you organise a meeting for 10, they don’t care if you let them enter or not. The English arrive at 9.55, the Italian, even if he comes at 10.01, arrives in a hurry and is fed up.

The Portuguese are there at 10 or 9.59. A Frenchman, who is always right, comes at 10 but thinks there was no actual reason to be punctual. Russians arrive at 10, not a minute before and not a minute after. They need to be guided.”

Looking at who he worked with at Chelsea and Inter, can you guess who he is referring to?

Roll on the new season…

The departure of Kaka from AC Milan to Real Madrid marks the end of the Italian era in European football. Not only can Italian clubs not attract the best players in the world to play in Serie A but now, when they unearth a talent like Kaka, they can’t stop them from leaving.

Italians used to describe their Serie A as ‘il campionato piu bello del mondo’ , the most beautiful championship in the world. It was not just because Italians love nothing more than talking themselves up — Serie A was the first league in the world to sign up top foreign stars, bringing in international talent at a time when the English league, for example, stretched no further than Scotland in search of players.

Beginning in the late 1950’s when the likes of Brazilian Jose Altafini (AC Milan) and Welshman John Charles (Juventus) were among the top performers, Serie A prided itself on being the league that had the money to bring in the best in the world.

After the 1966 World Cup, where Italy was humiliated by North Korea, foreigners were banned as part of an attempt to strengthen the domestic talent base and the national team, but when the rule was relaxed in 1980, the top clubs began importing talent again and before long Italy had become the first league to truly take on global status.

Frenchman Michel Platini at Juventus led the new wave and then the biggest name of all, Diego Maradona almost single-handedly led Napoli to titles in 1987 and 1990. The great Milan sides of Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello were built around foreign stars — the Dutch trio of Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten helped transform Serie A from a league dominated by cautious and defensive teams into a showcase for the world’s best talent.

Germany’s Lothar Matthaeus and Andreas Brehme helped Inter to the title in 1989, and by the nineties, any player in the world who could be considered a match-winner was being snapped up by an Italian team.

Just ten years ago, the top teams in Serie A included players such as Ronaldo at Inter, George Weah and a young Andriy Shevchenko at Milan, Gabriel Batistuta at Fiorentina, Hernan Crespo, Pavel Nedved and Juan Sebastian Veron (all at their peak) at Lazio and the best of his generation, Zinedine Zidane at Juventus. It was the departure of the latter to Real Madrid in 2001 that suggested Spain was beginning to replace Italy as the place where the world’s best could get paid best.

Since then though, England’s Premier League, flush with television cash, has begun gobbling up players that in the past would have headed to Serie A. In the 1990’s the likes of Fernando Torres, Michael Ballack, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and Didier Drogba would have almost certainly been Serie A players. Real and Barcelona in Spain and Bayern Munich in Germany have also proven stronger in the transfer market that Italy’s top teams. It would have once been unthinkable that Italian World Cup hero such as Luca Toni would choose to play in the Bundesliga rather than in Milan or Turin.

A week after Milan captain Paolo Maldini, who played with or against all those great talents from the late eighties onwards, finally hung up his boots, Kaka leaves Milan for a fee of around 68 million euros and Adriano Galliani, who runs Milan on behalf of tycoon and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi conceded the golden era of Serie A was now over: “Ten years ago Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo could have played in Italy but now no one even considers it,” he said.

That is the painful truth for Italian fans — it is not so much that Italian clubs cannot compete with Real’s occasional obscene bouts of cash-throwing that hurts but that Italian clubs are no longer even considered as likely destinations for the world’s best or most promising.

Berlusconi talked up Ronaldinho as the man who will now be the standard-bearer for Milan but the impression is that he moved to Italy after his best years, served with Barcelona, were over.

Money is the main reason for Italy’s relegation from Europe’s elite — Milan, Inter and Juventus no longer have the resources to compete with England and Spain’s top clubs. Italian clubs ignored marketing and merchandising as they presumed their wealthy owners — the Berlusconi, Moratti and Agnelli families — would take care of everything. Moratti still finds the cash but Milan and Juve now operate in the world of budgets rather than blockbuster transfer deals.

With the lack of foreign quality and top wages, Serie A has lost the sheen of glamour that once led fans from all over the world to tune in and watch. The days when Ronaldo and Zidane were face to face in an Inter-Juve match, with a supporting cast of quality Italians and exciting foreign players, is over. Does anyone watch Serie A on satellite or cable anymore?

The proof that this really is the end of an era is the way that the Italian media and fans have just shrugged their shoulders at the departure of Kaka. They know they cannot turn down offers of that size — offers their own teams used to make every summer.

KAKA: Kaka attends Brazilian training at Arruda stadium in Recife, northeastern Brazil, June 8, 2009. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes

ZIDANE: Zinedine Zidane shows his Juventus shirt at a news conference announcing his move to Turin, July 3, 1996. REUTERS/Claudio Papi

A Champions League with unfancied Porto, two Premier League titles with Chelsea — the first in fifty years — and the scudetto with Inter Milan in his first season.

Is there anything Jose Mourinho can’t do?

Roberto Mancini, who led Inter to the last three titles, should take a lot of the credit but Mourinho didnt try to stamp his authority on the team too much. After a bit of an experiment at the start of his reign, he realised Mancini’s tactics were the best with the personnel available.

(See here for a more depth look at Mourinho’s newfound humility)

Yes Serie A is much weaker than in the 1990s but Mourinho’s Inter have still romped home ahead of star-studded AC Milan and the might of a reborn Juventus.

If Zlatan Ibrahimovic decides to leave it will be much, much tricker next term. Then again, Mourinho is probably plotting right now how he can retain the title and make an impression in the Champions League…

Genoa striker Diego Milito and Udinese’s Fabio Quagliarella look good bets.

PHOTO: Inter Milan fans celebrate their team’s 17th league title in Milan’s Piazza Duomo after second-placed AC Milan handed them the scudetto by losing 2-1 at Udinese. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

Nerves are totally understandable at the end of the season with so much at stake.

Even seasoned campaigners get afflicted by the jitter bug, with Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan losing the lead twice in a 2-2 draw at Chievo on Sunday with a fourth straight scudetto almost theirs.

Inter let a 12-point lead slip last term and tumbled over the line on the final day while fans will always remember their incredible collapse in 2002, which included a 2-2 draw with Chievo…

Spanish leaders Barcelona were even worse on Sunday, seeing their title party ruined by Villarreal’s two late goals in a 3-3 draw at the Nou Camp.

Of course, they will both still win their respective championships but a quick glance over to England will show how to avoid nerves.

Manchester United beat city rivals Manchester City 2-0 to move within a whisker of retaining their title and there wasn’t a jitter in sight.

Alex Ferguson has cleverly rotated his squad in the run-in to keep players fresh and hungry, especially with a Champions League final to come.

The underused Carlos Tevez, desperate to show he is worthy of a new deal, scored and put in a masterly performance.

Mourinho had a great record against Ferguson before this season, but he has again been out-thought.

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s coach Jose Mourinho (R) reacts to the linesman during his Italian Serie A soccer match against Chievo at the Bentegodi stadium in Verona May 10, 2009. REUTERS/Max Rossi

Adriano looks to have played his last match for Inter Milan after failing to return to the Serie A leaders from international duty with Brazil this month and announcing he was taking a break from football.

President Massimo Moratti said last week that Inter were considering extinguishing the player’s contract, which runs until the end of next season.

They have grounds to do so as the failure to turn up to work of the 27-year-old, who has suffered alcohol and personal problems, comes after a string of run-ins with coaches and incidents of indiscipline.

In fairness, Inter have tried hard to restore the fine fettle Adriano displayed between 2004 and 2006, when he was one of Serie A’s most feared forwards and helped Brazil win the 2004 Copa America as the competition’s top scorer.

They allowed him to have a loan stint at Sao Paulo in the first half of 2008, when he scored 16 goals, but he was soon out of sorts again when back in Italy even though his old foe Roberto Mancini had been replaced by coach Jose Mourinho.

Indeed, this time the club appear to have few alternatives to offloading the player after he said he is unhappy in Italy and wants to “live in peace here in Brazil”.

If life in Serie A is really what is getting Adriano down, he will probably not be tempted by future offers from Inter’s domestic rivals, something his agent suggested on Friday.

The burly striker’s comments seem to rule out a move elsewhere in Europe too and his fragile reputation would probably scare off the top clubs at the moment anyway.

But with his blend of speed, power and agility he remains potentially formidable and if gets back into the groove in his homeland, he may soon find the Brazilian top flight limited.

A return to form would help foreign managers forget his troubled past, at which point a transfer to the English Premier League, where the off-field pressure is less intense than in Serie A, would not be out of the question.

You never know. Adriano could come back to haunt Inter in the Champions League yet.

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s Brazilian soccer striker Adriano smiles during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, April 9, 2009. Reuters photo.

After years of racist chanting from the stands, Italian soccer has finally realised it has a problem.

Inter Milan goalscorer Mario Balotelli, born in Palermo and of Ghanaian descent, was racially abused by sections of the Juventus crowd during Saturday’s 1-1 Serie A draw in Turin.

Fans sang “a black Italian does not exist” at the Italy under-21 international.

Maybe it is because the high-profile game was a top-of-the-table clash, maybe it is because Balotelli is Italian, but this time the revulsion felt by fans and the media is much greater than at any time in the past.

Monkey chants towards non-Italian black players are a reasonably regular occurence but clubs normally get just a small fine, like 8,000 euros, from the league. Media coverage is minimal.

This time even some Juve supporters are calling on the authorities to make an example of the Turin club and make them play games behind closed doors at the Stadio Olimpico or force them to move their matches to another stadium.

Making them play at another stadium might not be a huge punishment, though. Despite what Inter and AC Milan think, Juve are Italy’s biggest club and most of their fans are from the rest of the country not Turin. Being forced to play games in the south for example would please many Juve supporters who rarely see their team.

The newspapers expect nothing more than the usual fine but momentum is building with the police involved and Inter president Massimo Moratti saying he would have pulled his team off the pitch if he had been in Turin on Saturday.

Balotelli is a controversial character who likes to wind up opponents and fans but no one deserves the treatment he received.

UPDATE: JUVE MUST PLAY ONE GAME BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

PHOTOS: Inter Milan’s Mario Balotelli (C) celebrates with supporters after scoring against Juventus during their Serie A match in Turin, April 18, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi