Mark Cavendish packed his lightweight helmet, his fingerless gloves and his cleated shoes and went home on Friday night, with a full week of the Giro d'Italia still to go. Cycling is a funny sport sometimes, its conventions and nuances difficult for the uninitiated to comprehend, and here was an example. Why, in perfect health and with three stage victories to his name, would the man who has proved himself unquestionably the rider of the year so far decide to walk away from the climax of the centenary edition of one of cycling's great races?

The answer is that, for Cavendish, Friday's 13th stage of the Giro d'Italia was his 55th day of competitive riding in 2009. Six weeks hence he will be on the starting line in Monaco, requiring every ounce of his strength as he sets off on his quest to become the first British rider to win the green jersey in the Tour de France. And the grand plan says he needs a rest.

Introduced in 1953 and given to the rider who compiles the biggest total of points for stage placings and intermediate sprints, the green jersey is usually won by a sprinter with a modicum of all-round ability. Cavendish, who celebrated his 24th birthday last week, is a specialist sprinter who knows that he will have to work on other elements of the package if he is to achieve his ambition. But there is a chance that he will bring it off this July, a year after he established a record for a British rider of four stage wins in the 2008 Tour, which he also left early in order to prepare himself for the Olympic Games.

You don't win the green jersey if you don't finish the race, of course, and for Cavendish that will mean hauling himself across the summits of the various mountains included in this year's Tour itinerary. By the time the riders reach the mighty Mont Ventoux on the penultimate day they will already have 2,000 miles in their weary legs, including ascents of the Port d'Envalira, the Col du Tourmalet, the Grand Saint Bernard and the Cormet de Roselend.

I make no apology for returning to the subject of Cavendish so soon after praising his victory in the Milan-San Remo one-day classic last month. What the young Manxman is doing is as remarkable as anything currently being achieved by any British sportsman or woman in any field, and he deserves far more than the muted credit he is getting at home.

In countries where cycling is woven more deeply into sporting life, his deeds are being looked on with awe. Italians were impressed last week when, having suffered defeat at the hands of the local hero Alessandro Petacchi in two early stages of the Giro, Cavendish came back, his pride aflame, exploiting the talent and discipline of his Columbia-High Road team-mates to make the score 3–2 in his favour before both men left the race on the same evening.

And on Saturday morning, the cycling correspondent of L'Equipe christened him "le Mozart du onze-dents". Those words translate into something rather less poetic: the Mozart of the 11-tooth sprocket, that being the smallest sprocket on the cassette of a racer's derailleur gears, and the one which a sprinter uses to mount his final charge to the line.

It's worth noting once again that, through no fault of his own, Cavendish was the only member of Britain's entire Olympic track cycling squad to leave Beijing last summer without having found his way on to the podium. When, on the way home, he borrowed a gold medal from a team-mate who had one to spare in order to try and get himself the upgrade to the first-class cabin granted by British Airways to the winners, he was spotted and sent back into his pre-assigned seat.

He has never been short of ambition and self-confidence, but maybe the petty humiliation that followed his unexpected Olympic setback is one of the factors currently putting wings on his 11-tooth sprocket.

Uefa pragmatists spawn another oversized monster

We said goodbye last week to the Uefa Cup, which began life in 1955 as the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, changed its title in 1971, and next season will mutate into the Europa League, a competition that promises to burden its finalists with an extra 19 games in an already overcrowded season.

The choice of title is interesting and significant. Here, surely, is the climax of Uefa's long campaign to silence those of us who persist in referring to their senior knock-out club competition as the European Cup, which is how it became known to English-speakers when Gabriel Hanot invented it, also in 1955. The first references to the Champions League came in 1992-93, when the new title was introduced by stealth – I remember it appearing that winter, with no prior announcement, on hoardings around the perimeter of San Siro before a tie between Milan and Gothenburg.

For my money, the thing that either Manchester United or Barcelona will hold aloft in Rome on Wednesday is the European Cup. But now that there is something officially known as the Europa League, the battle to defend the historic title of Hanot's great tournament appears to be lost.

Mourinho's ego got in way of success, says Makelele

Here is Claude Makelele on Jose Mourinho, from the former Chelsea midfielder's new autobiography, published in France this week: "For two years we lived like a gang of mates who eat together, get out of their heads together, train together the next day, and win matches together." The solidarity of the Chelsea squad between 2004 and 2006 was exceptional. Mourinho destroyed that unity by getting rid of certain elements in favour of new players considered to be stars. Certainly, he made it clear that he was not in favour of all the new recruits. But if that was the case, he should have gone ...

"Very early in the 2006–07 season he became distant from the players. At a stroke, a split opened in the spirit of brotherhood which had united us with him. Then he got involved with Abramovich. When the president asked for his champion players to express themselves more freely on the pitch, Mourinho obstinately refused to change his methods ... Something was broken at the top and we, the players, finished up suffering for it ...

"During the third and final season under that regime, I was shocked to see how Mourinho forgot the vital role of the players and took just about all the credit for himself ... For him, it wasn't the individuals who made the team work but the methods he had put in place. Towards the end, he really gave the impression that he felt endangered whenever a player took the attention away from him."

Just as we thought, no?

France finds its voice during Heineken session

The domestic rugby season, in which the effect of the experimental law variations created so much debate and controversy, ended with a Heineken Cup final that relocated us squarely in the days of good old thud and blunder. Watching Leinster overcome Leicester on French television, the commentators' exclamations of "Quelle bataille! Quelle bataille!" came thick and fast. And none the worse for that, if you ask me.