Roma coach Jose Mourinho has explained allowing Kevin de Bruyne and Mohamed Salah to leave when Chelsea manager.

De Bruyne and Salah have gone on to achieve greatness with Manchester City and Chelsea respectively.

"To be honest, they left because they wanted to leave," Mourinho told the Obi One podcast. "They left because they didn't want to wait.

"History proves that their option was good because they've had the careers they have and reached a high standard, but sometimes kids make decisions like that because they can't wait, or they don't have the patience to be calm and to wait for the right moment. Sometimes their career goes in the wrong direction."

Mourinho added: "When people say I let Salah go, I say exactly the opposite. I bought Salah. I was the one who said buy that guy. He was going from Basel to Liverpool, and I made a fight, I made a war, to make him come to Chelsea.

"Then comes the part when, to be a Chelsea player, you have to perform, or you need to wait. He didn't want to wait, he wanted to go on loan. And then Chelsea, at a certain point, decided to sell. He went to Fiorentina and Roma, and that was not me deciding to sell. I was saying let him go on loan if he feels he needs to play every minute of every game."