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Monaco have denied claims that Chelsea rejected a €50 million (£35m) bid from the Ligue 1 club for Jose Mourinho, calling on the media to ignore the "extravagant and unsubstantiated rumours" of shareholder Alessandro Proto. Monaco minority shareholder Proto said in a statement from his company Proto Enterprises to Spanish news agency EFE on Tuesday that he met Roman Abramovich in London to try to tempt the Chelsea owner into letting Mourinho go, with the Premier League champions 15th after 11 games. Proto says that Abramovich rejected the offer from Monaco's owner Dmitry Rybolovlev despite Mourinho's Stamford Bridge future being in doubt, but that the Chelsea owner would reportedly consider a €100m (£71m) fee. "We offered [Abramovich] €50m to have [Mourinho] immediately, but the request was for €100m and that seemed to be an exaggeration," Proto said, adding that "Monaco would not pay a similar amount." However, the Principality club appeared to dismiss his claims in a Twitter message to the media on Wednesday, writing: "AS Monaco would invite the media to not repeat extravagant and unsubstantiated rumours from a supposedly minority shareholder." Proto (had earlier) said that while Rybolovlev refused to offer Abramovich's alleged €100m asking price for Mourinho, the Monaco owner was considering the offer as an "investment" because "Mourinho is worth €100m... he is the best coach in the world." Proto said there are teams -- one in Spain, one in France and one in the United States -- that would pay such a fee, and speculated that Mourinho "won't spend much longer at Chelsea." Sources told ESPN FC on Sunday that Mourinho has two games to save his Chelsea job after Saturday's home defeat to Liverpool, with Wednesday's Champions League tie against Dynamo Kiev and Saturday's trip to Stoke the matches in question. Chelsea captain John Terry backed Mourinho on Tuesday, saying that any player who wanted to lose "wouldn't get out of the dressing room," and that there was no player revolt regarding the manager's future.
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