Another day, another extraordinary Jose Mourinho rant.
The Portuguese coach has had to defend his managerial qualities following Manchester United’s disappointing exit at the hands of Sevilla in the Champions League.
And Mourinho is ready to blame pretty much everyone except himself.
Speaking to the media on Friday, the 55-year-old used Man United’s recent history to suggest expectations should be lowered around Old Trafford.
“In seven years with four different managers, once not qualifying for Europe, twice out in the group phase and the best was the quarter-final, this is football heritage (of United),” Mourinho said.
“And if you want to go to the Premier League, the last victory was 12/13 and in the four consecutive seasons (since) United finished seventh, fourth, fifth and sixth. So in the last four years the best was fourth. This is football heritage.
“We went out to a side that’s more successful than Manchester United in [the] last seven years in Europe. In Sevilla, there are many players who would play in my team.”
He doesn’t take criticism very well, does he?
Mourinho has had many bizarre meetings with the media in his career as a football manager and Mesut Ozil shed some light on his true motives in his 2017 book, ‘Gunning for Greatness’.
According to Ozil, it’s all a distraction to take the attention away when his players are under-performing.
Ozil was a part of the Werder Bremen side that beat Mourinho’s Inter Milan 2-1 in the Champions League in 2008 and Ozil reflected: “Following the game, Inter’s coach got a bit of a roasting from the German media. ‘Werder shuts up big mouth Mourinho,’ Bild said.”
Mourinho had been bragging about his status pre-match, and also got into a spat with a journalist whose question he didn’t appreciate, and Ozil believes the coach was simply causing a diversion.
“Once again Mourinho had bagged the headlines for himself over the next few days. And I’m pretty sure that this was his plan,” the German playmaker added.
“Given the experience I’ve had of him at Real, I suspect he wanted to distract attention away from other things - there could have been problems within the Inter Milan team - injuries, discussions about the formation or something else.
“At any rate, when we worked together in Madrid he often behaved like that.
“Mourinho would already know in the evening if the two big Spanish daily sports papers were going to lay into the team the following morning."
Ozil: We needed Mourinho to do it
Ozil added: “He knew if Marca or AS were going to turn against us, which would have unsettled the team. So he would attempt a diversionary tactic.
“He didn’t care if the counter-attack ended up being at his own expense and his image suffered as a result of supposedly provocative comments.
“He was an interceptor, without whom the team would never have escaped unscathed, nor could we have gone about our work in peace.”
Mourinho may be harming his reputation, but his players must appreciate him taking the brunt of the criticism.