Mourinho says he will never manage Barcelona

Jose Mourinho has admitted he could never coach Barcelona after leaving the Catalan club's Champions League dreams in tatters last night.

Inter boss Mourinho oversaw a 3-2 aggregate win following a 1-0 second-leg defeat at the Nou Camp after being almost constantly jeered by the home crowd.

Mourinho is disparagingly known among some Barca fans as 'the translator', having begun his journey in football management in that role alongside Bobby Robson at the Nou Camp in the 1990s, before working as a coach under Louis van Gaal for three seasons.

The Portuguese, who will now face his old mentor Van Gaal as Inter prepare to take on Bayern Munich in the final in Madrid on May 22, knows the chances of him ever landing the top job with the Catalan giants are now virtually non-existent.

Mourinho, who also crossed swords with Barca while in charge at Chelsea, did little to endear himself again to the club on Tuesday by claiming they were "obsessed" with reaching the Champions League final on the home turf of their bitter rivals Real Madrid, and the crowd reacted badly when he raced onto the pitch to celebrate Inter's aggregate success at the final whistle.

"I'm not stupid enough to think that this hate can be turned into love," he said.

"I respect Barca and and I'll never forget what the club gave me in the four years I was here, but something has been created around me that is hard to make positive," he said.

"It is clear that I will end my career without having coached Barca."

Last night's match was the 10th between Mourinho and Barcelona in the last six years, with the Catalans having faced Chelsea on six occasions and Inter four times.

Six of those matches have come in knockout ties, with Mourinho having now eliminated the Catalans from Europe on two occasions.

"If I never beat them, they wouldn't hate me," Mourinho said.

And the Inter coach believes he is now more unpopular even than former Barca winger Luis Figo, who left the club as a a player to join Madrid and was never forgiven by the Catalan faithful.

"Figo (who returned to the Nou Camp last night as an ambassador for Inter) told me he was calm and relaxed because I was the one they hate now, because I was their new enemy," he said.

Bizarrely, Mourinho claimed the key to beating Barcelona was relinquishing possession at the Nou Camp.

"We didn't want the ball because when Barcelona press and win the ball back, we lose our position - I never want to lose position on the pitch so I didn't want us to have the ball, we gave it away," he said.

"I told my players that we could let the ball help us win and that we had to be compact, closing spaces," he added.

But things looked ominous when midfielder Thiago Motta was sent off after 28 minutes for Inter.

Motta, already booked, raised his hand and appeared to push Sergio Busquets in the neck, but the Barca midfielder went down theatrically holding his face and writhed on the ground in apparent agony between glances at the referee.

Motta was disgusted by the player's reaction.

"He always does it, I have seen it on TV and he is holding his face and then looking at the referee - it is terrible behaviour," he said.

Inter held on, despite playing more than an hour against 10 men, but Guardiola says his Barca side will bounce back.

"We lost to a great team and a great coach, but we want to win the league and we will be back - I have nothing to reproach my players for," he said.