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For all his massive success – he’s won trophies at all of the clubs he’s been managing, from Porto and Chelsea to Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Manchester United – Jose Mourinho remains one of the most divisive figures in football history. If he’s at your club and providing success, you probably love him. But if he’s elsewhere, he’s the perfect pantomime villain.
Part of the reason for this is the way he loves to antagonize opposing players, coaches, and chairmen. The Portuguese boss loves nothing more than to make an inflammatory statement to get under the skin of his opponents – but unfortunately, due to his constant needling, he has been exposed as a hypocrite on numerous occasions.
Here are ten of the best contradictory statements or moments in the career of Jose Mourinho.
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#1 It’s a game of points....or is it?
Mourinho’s Manchester United side went unbeaten for a long period of time in 2016/17 – 25 Premier League games without a loss, to be exact, from October 2016 through to May 2017. But due to their large number of draws during the run – twelve – they only finished in 6th place. It was in early April when Mourinho made a classic contradictory statement about this fact.
At the time, United had gone 20 games unbeaten but had drawn ten of them. When asked about this, Mourinho seemed pleased with himself. He said
"I know as an example 10 matches, 10 draws,10 points. Or 10 matches, five victories, five defeats,15 points. What's better? The 15 points obviously, but in terms of looking to the future, I prefer to look at 10 matches, 10 draws because you have something that's not easy to have.You are quite solid mentally, difficult to beat, you fight against difficult circumstances, that kind of mentality of resilience, it's good to have it."
It’d be a fair enough argument....except in 2014, Mourinho was quoted as saying that
“if you get 10 draws, you get 10 points. If you win 5 and lose 5, you make 15 points. I’d prefer 15 points and lost matches than 10 points and be undefeated”.
Basically, it seems that Jose just makes his arguments to fit around his situation at the time, does it not?
#2 Is Cristiano Ronaldo a diver or not?
For all his greatness, few followers of the beautiful game would deny that Cristiano Ronaldo has been guilty of simulation, or diving, on more than one occasion during his decorated career. It seemed that his countryman Mourinho once felt the same way. Back in 2008, when Mourinho had just taken over at Inter Milan, he was questioned about his former Chelsea forward Didier Drogba.
Mourinho stated that
"I am no longer Chelsea manager and I don't have to defend them so I think it's correct if I say Drogba is a diver. Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, Robin van Persie are the divers who won more penalties during the last four or five years".
Fast-forward to September 2011, when both Mourinho and Ronaldo were at Real Madrid. During a game against Getafe, Ronaldo scored a penalty following a controversial call from the referee as Ronaldo not only appeared to have dived, but the supposed contact came outside the box. Mourinho’s take?
"It wasn't a penalty, that's a fact. But what's also true is that it was a foul, because Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't dive, like a few others do, and even less when he already has a yellow card, as it was the case. There was no reason for a penalty (the foul was outside the penalty area), but that incident took place when were dominating the match and I'm convicted we would end by scoring sooner or later and still win the match."
It seems Jose will go to any lengths to protect his players....and any lengths to throw opposing ones under the bus, too!
#3 What’s the Europa League worth?
Plenty of people in football have had differing opinions on the value of the Europa League – some have seen it as a prestigious tournament to win, particularly now that it allows the victor a chance in the following season’s Champions League, but others view it as a tedious exercise that can distract sides from their own domestic league campaign due to its arduous nature and awkward fixtures. Jose Mourinho? Apparently, he feels both ways. He claimed
“I don’t know the way the other clubs think; I don’t know what is important for them. At Manchester United, for us it’s more important to win titles than to finish in the top four."
Flashback to the summer of 2013, though, and Mourinho was telling a different story. He’d just taken over Chelsea – months after Rafael Benitez had guided them to victory in the competition – but he stated that
“I don’t want to win the Europa League. It would be a big disappointment for me. I don’t want my players to feel the Europa League is our competition.”
So what’s the Europa League worth? Seems like Jose can’t make his mind up.
#4 They’ll be out for how long?
This one was a classic bit of Mourinho misdirection aimed squarely at trying to get under the skin of an opposing manager, in this case, Atletico Madrid’s Diego Simeone. The season was 2013/14, and Mourinho’s Chelsea side had drawn Simeone’s Atletico in the semi-finals of the Champions League. The first game, played at the Vicente Calderon, took place on April 22nd, 2014. It ended 0-0, but worryingly for Chelsea, both goalkeeper Petr Cech and captain and defender John Terry had to be substituted due to injuries.
Post-match saw Mourinho make two bold claims – that neither Cech nor Terry would be available for the second leg at Stamford Bridge a week later. His exact quote?
"Petr Cech's season over. Don't ask me technically, but season over. And John - we have to play the final for him to play with us."
Cech indeed didn’t play for the rest of the season, being replaced by Chelsea’s substitute keeper Mark Schwarzer. But Terry? Not only did he return to action before May's final, but he actually started the second leg of the tie on April 30th!
Mourinho’s plan was clearly to make Simeone assume he would be without his influential “captain, leader and legend” for the key tie, but in the end, the ploy didn’t help Chelsea, who were defeated 1-3 at home by Atletico and sent packing from the Champions League. Terry ended the game crying in the center circle – perhaps he’d have been better off with that injury keeping him out?
#5 How much for Van Dijk?
When Jurgen Klopp parted with £75m to bring Virgil Van Dijk to Liverpool from Southampton – a world-record fee for a defender – more than a few eyebrows were raised. And unsurprisingly, one pair of those eyebrows belonged to Jose Mourinho. With Klopp’s Liverpool being Premier League rivals to Mourinho’s Manchester United, the Portuguese manager simply had to stick his oar into this one.
And so Mourinho questioned the fee, hitting back at Klopp for his comments a year previous when United parted with a world-record fee of £89m to bring in Paul Pogba from Juventus. Mourinho exclaimed
"I think the ones that speak about it (big fees) in a specific way has to be Jurgen, and if I was one of you I would ask him about his comments about one year ago. Van Dijk is the most expensive defender in history of football, was he better than Paolo Maldini, Giuseppe Bergomi or Rio Ferdinand? You cannot say that".
Naturally, that statement didn’t sit well with Liverpool fans.
The fans instantly took to Twitter to condemn Mourinho for what they felt was total hypocrisy, given the ever-inflating transfer market that means transfer fees go up and up each season. One fan even pointed out that Mourinho had paid £30.75m for flop Victor Lindelof, so did that mean he was better than Maldini and Bergomi too? You’ve got to admit it – the Liverpool fan had a fair point.
#6 You can’t talk about opposing players – unless you’re Mourinho
For a man who offers so many controversial views on opposing players and managers, it’s surprising that Mourinho simply can’t take an opponent doing the same in the opposite direction. Case in point, when he paid a world-record fee of £89m to bring Paul Pogba back to Manchester United from Juventus. Many other managers were alarmed by the fee, including Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger and Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp.
And so Mourinho went on the offensive.
“I only speak about us”, he said, “and I already heard two of my colleagues from other clubs speaking about us. I do not like that. It is not ethical”. This was a hilarious statement for so many reasons, particularly when you consider he’d labeled Wenger a “specialist in failure” in the past. But had he ever spoken out about big-money transfers before? Well, yes.
Specifically, the transfer of Luke Shaw from Southampton to Manchester United prior to Mourinho’s arrival there, back in 2014 when he was still Chelsea boss. In classic Mourinho fashion, he’d defended his club for not signing Shaw, stating
“If we pay to a 19-year old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead – we would’ve killed our stability with financial fair play and killed the stability in the dressing room”.
#7 You can’t over-celebrate – unless you’re Mourinho
With Mourinho’s arch-rival Pep Guardiola now in charge at Manchester United’s arch-rivals Manchester City, fireworks were bound to go off at some time during one of the derby clashes between the two clubs. Tensions were surprisingly calm between the two in 2016/17, but this past December’s derby saw Mourinho lose his cool after his side lost 1-2 – ending their unbeaten home run of 40 games.
The Portuguese boss’s issue? Apparently, City had over-celebrated following their victory, a situation that spiraled into a supposed 20-man brawl with bottles and punches being thrown. Mourinho supposedly sparked the brawl by confronting City’s goalkeeper Ederson, and then he claimed Guardiola’s side were being “disrespectful” by playing loud music in their dressing room following their win. Comparing their celebrations with United's after a win at Arsenal, stating
“The only thing I can say is that, for me, it was a question of diversity. Diversity in behavior, diversity in education...the diversity of behavior, of opinion, of education.”
But of course, if anyone’s the king of over-celebrating, it’s Jose Mourinho. Remember when he sprinted around the pitch following Inter Milan’s Champions League win over Barcelona, causing Victor Valdes to have to be restrained? Or his knee-slide when his Real Madrid side defeated Manchester City 3-2? Or the time when, well, you get the picture. He’s over-celebrated at least five or six times – meaning he had no cause to call out Guardiola’s City side for doing the same.
#8 Don’t cry for me, Antonio Conte!
When you’ve got an Arsenal legend like Charlie Nicholas jumping into an argument to defend Chelsea’s manager, then you know you’ve got a problem. Or an inflammatory remark from Jose Mourinho in this case. After Manchester United’s 1-0 win over Benfica in the Champions League in October 2017, Mourinho hit out at managers who complain about injuries – a thinly veiled dig at Chelsea boss Antonio Conte, who had been doing just that in the press.
"And there is another situation, maybe I'm guilty of it: I never speak about injuries.Other managers, they cry, they cry, they cry when some player is injured. I don't cry.I think the way to do it is to ignore the players that are injured, is to focus on the players that are available. It is to give confidence to the players that are available".
Conte immediately responded, telling Mourinho that he should focus on his own side and not on Chelsea as he had done in the past, but Nicholas went one further, claiming Mourinho “cried all of last season at Manchester United – he actually got it to a fine art at one stage, he always looked miserable”. And Nicholas wasn’t wrong, as Mourinho proved just two months later.
In December 2017 – after losing both Romelu Lukaku and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to injury – Mourinho stated
"The boys are trying, but we have lots of problems in the team and we lost Lukaku and Ibrahimovic for a month, Michael Carrick, it was in pre-season when he last played in the league and I don’t remember him playing during the season so we have problems. We have difficulty to rotate players."
Does that sound like crying about injuries to anyone else? I’d say so.
#9 19th Century Boy
When Sam Allardyce’s West Ham side played a heavily defensive game in order to take a 0-0 draw with Mourinho’s Chelsea side back in the 2013/14 season, the Portuguese boss was extremely unhappy in his post-match press conference, even for his standards. He accused Allardyce’s side of
“Playing football from the 19th century” and went on to claim that West Ham’s tactics didn’t “feel the quality of the Premier League”.
For his part, ‘Big Sam’ simply laughed off the insults and stated that he “didn’t give a shite”. But hilariously, Mourinho’s rage against Allardyce’s defensive tactics seemed a little ill-placed given his own reputation for defensive play at times. Most notably Mourinho had used a highly defensive tactic to stifle Barcelona during his period as manager of Inter Milan in their 2009/10 Champions League winning season, and he’d even “parked the bus” in a 0-0 draw with David Moyes’s Manchester United side in 2013.
And a few years down the line, Mourinho even admitted to a plan to “park the bus” in United’s game with Manchester City in December 2017. When asked if he planned to deploy an attacking side, he said “it’s not true”, and then went on to explain that when City had the ball, his side planned to “defend with eleven”. Could that sound like West Ham’s tactic from 2014? Does it sound like 19th-century football to anyone else? Perhaps in Mourinho’s eyes, it would.
#10 Football is for men....when Mourinho feels like it
Over the years, Mourinho has become famed for backing his players to the hilt, regardless of their perceived misdemeanors. Sure, he’ll freeze the odd player out but for the most part, anyone in a Mourinho squad knows their boss has their back. Which could be the reason for his hypocrisy regarding harder tackles. We go back to 2013/14 for a great Mourinho quote, following a game between Chelsea and Arsenal that saw Jon Obi Mikel commit a dangerously late tackle on Mikel Arteta.
Mourinho’s take? “The tackle is a hard one, an aggressive one – but football is for men”. That’d be all well and good if Mourinho were a staunch supporter of the old-school, harder-tackling type of football. But of course, he only adopts that stance when it’s one of his players dishing out the hard tackle. If this man is on the receiving end, well, things seem a hell of a lot different. Like they did in 2015 during a game between Mourinho’s Chelsea and Burnley.
In this instance, Burnley’s Ashley Barnes hit Nemanja Matic with an admittedly dangerous challenge that went unpunished. Jose’s reaction? It was a “criminal tackle” that could’ve ended Matic’s career, and Barnes should’ve seen a straight red card for it. What happened to football being a “man’s game” in this instance, then? For Mourinho, that clearly only counts when it’s his player committing the foul.
