EVER HAD THAT feeling that you just cannot lose? You win a game of tennis in the park then stick a speculative quid in the slot machine on the way home and win the jackpot. Then you pop into a bar to buy a cold beer with the winnings and find yourself leaving with the prettiest girl in the place. Then she introduces you to her twin sister, the movie star . . .

It is a feeling that Chelsea must be experiencing at this very moment. The Carling Cup is already in the trophy cabinet, the Barclays Premiership is about to join it and they stand just five matches away from capturing the European Cup. Even when the manager gets into trouble for his scandalously irresponsible remarks about Anders Frisk, the Swedish referee, they get away with a slap on the wrist.

Everything, it seems, is going the way of the men in blue. Is it any wonder, then, that they are exuding the kind of cast-iron certainty that is normally the preserve of evangelists and madmen? Self-confidence could be defined as a belief in one’s abilities that exceeds the evidence. In many professions, such as mountaineering and science, it is an attitude that would prove disastrous. For sportsmen it is the prerequisite for greatness.

I retired from table tennis because mine vanished. One morning I woke up believing that I could beat anyone; the next I woke up believing that I could lose to anyone. Both beliefs were valid, but they represented polar extremes in terms of attitude. When I faced a weaker adversary, my mind seemed to focus exclusively on the possibility of defeat; when I faced a stronger opponent, my creativity was strangled by pessimism. My form plummeted.

Chelsea find themselves traversing the opposite arc. Where will it end? Perhaps a glimmer of hope for Bayern Munich, who face the London side in the first leg of the quarter- finals of the European Cup at Stamford Bridge tomorrow night, is that José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, has been banished to the stands by Uefa for his comments about Frisk.

It is Mourinho who deserves the plaudits for the psychological nirvana that Chelsea have discovered this season — unless, that is, you want to credit the cash of Roman Abramovich, the owner, for buying the best manager in Europe in the first place. It amounts to the same thing. If sports psychology is a science, Mourinho is the Sir Isaac Newton of the discipline. FC Porto exuded that strutting self-certainty last season when Mourinho was in charge; now it is the preserve of Chelsea. The man from Portugal is able to impose this attitude upon his players because he is so manifestly possessed of it himself. Like any successful evangelist, he believes his own rhetoric. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, the Bible tells us, you can move mountains. Mourinho has got acres of the stuff.

It is an odd thing when you face such a man. A few years ago, I found myself conversing with a forceful preacher who was convinced of the literal truth of Genesis. He was more certain of its veracity, he said, than the proposition that two plus two equals four. What about its failure to mention the dinosaurs, I ventured tentatively. That all happened between verses 25 and 26, he replied without hesitation. For a few moments he almost had me.

In his more outspoken moments, Mourinho sounds like someone who, under different circumstances, might have been the leader of a cult. But then you discern a glint in his eye that makes you wonder whether he could posses a small dose of irony. As most Englishmen know, it is nigh impossible to be both ironical and fanatical simultaneously. Or perhaps this is another way in which Mourinho is a “special one”.

My suspicion is that the Chelsea players will cope without Mourinho being present on the bench. They will get a thoroughgoing team talk before travelling to the match, something that tends to register more forcefully than the pre-match meeting in the bowels of the stadium when the tension is reaching fever pitch.

Any substitutions will be conveyed from the stands via a scratch of the nose or a flick of the hair. Make no mistake, Chelsea will have found a way to hear their master’s voice, whether he is man-marked by Uefa, Fifa or the CIA. Besides, the Portuguese maestro will be there in spirit. And that, as history has taught us in the case of the early evangelists, is often enough.