Chelsea's captain John Terry had this week described Liverpool as the champions' closest challengers but in the first salvo before the new season Mourinho wrote off Liverpool as a defensive team.

"I believe Manchester United and Arsenal will, in spite of the fact Arsenal finished fourth and Liverpool third, still be the better teams," said Mourinho. "(Because of) the quality of their football, the way they play, the high quality in their squads.

"Liverpool are different. They are very competitive, it's very difficult to beat them. If they score a goal before you score it's very difficult to change it because they defend really well with 11 players - very, very compact. They are tactically very good. And they are potentially fighting for first place but I still fancy more the way Arsenal and Manchester United play football."

Mourinho's comments, made in Los Angeles, are the latest in a series of prickly exchanges between Benitez and Mourinho. After Chelsea's 2-1 FA Cup semifinal defeat by Liverpool, who went on to win last season's competition, Benitez sniped that his Chelsea counterpart had refused to shake hands at the end.

In the build-up the Spaniard belittled Mourinho's contribution to Chelsea's success of the past three seasons, claiming the credit lay instead with Roman Abramovich. This piqued Mourinho, who contrasted his disdain for Liverpool's approach with praise for the "always very good football" at Arsène Wenger's Arsenal, with whom he had also maintained frosty relations last season.