Mourinho meets Ranieri at Wembley

LONDON — Jose Mourinho locks horns with old adversary Claudio Ranieri as FA Cup winner Manchester United tackles fairytale Premier League champion Leicester City in Sunday’s Community Shield at Wembley. Mourinho, who has succeeded Louis van Gaal at United, twice piped Ranieri to the Serie A title during their time in Italy, where he goaded the Italian about his age, lack of success and poor command of English. But Ranieri took revenge last season, overseeing a 2-1 win over Mourinho’s Chelsea in December that proved to be the Portuguese’s last game in the job and finishing the campaign with the league trophy in his hands. Asked about his rival Friday, Ranieri said: “We are used to living with the pressure and without pressure we are not the same. Jose always tries to win and his career speaks for itself.” Mourinho, 53, succeeded Ranieri, 64, as Chelsea manager in 2004 and quickly built on the foundations laid by his predecessor, steering the west London club to back-to-back Premier League titles. Their paths did not cross directly until 2008, when Mourinho joined Inter Milan and beat Ranieri’s Juventus to the league title. Reacting to a claim from Ranieri that Mourinho needs to win things to feel sure of himself, the Inter coach said his rival had “the mentality of someone who doesn’t need to win” and was “too old to change.” Ranieri joined Roma, which pushed Inter all the way in a taut 2009-10 title race, only for Mourinho’s men to prevail by two points and beat it in the Coppa Italia final en route to a glorious Treble. Publicly, Mourinho’s attitude towards Ranieri has since softened. He described Leicester’s title win as “magic” and the pair were photographed embracing prior to a Soccer Aid charity match in June. But privately Mourinho will be itching to get under Ranieri’s skin, particularly having beaten him only twice in their six head-to-head encounters to date. Newcastle slumps in opener Rafa Benitez got his first bitter taste of life in the Championship (second tier) as his relegated Newcastle United side suffered a 1-0 defeat at Fulham in the first match of the English league season Friday. Fulham scored a deserved winner on the stroke of halftime when Matt Smith rose above a flat-footed defense to power home a header from a corner with Newcastle generally second best. “It’s a wake-up call. We will have games more difficult than this one,” Benitez was quoted as saying by the BBC. “If we play for something more important than the first game of the season maybe the anxiety will be even higher, we need to make sure we can manage that and play better.”