Mourinho refused to shake Hughes’ hand following Manchester United’s 2-2 stalemate with Stoke at the Bet365 Stadium on Saturday.
The Portuguese manager reacted angrily to questions about the incident after the clash.
But Marcotti claims Mourinho kicked off on purpose to deflect from his side’s disappointing performance.
“I don’t care if you’re so incensed, but own up to it,” Marcotti said on ESPN FC.
“Instead he adds these layers of mystery and as we said, this is what he does.
“He sticks up for his team by going and making the story about him, acting like a human lightning rod.
“He couldn’t care less about Mark Hughes but he’s not offended by it.
“What he was thinking was ‘right now we’ve dropped points for the first time this season, we have the Champions League coming up, I know what we’ll do, let’s go and give them (media) something completely different to talk about’ and he did it masterfully and we’re all falling for it.
“I guarantee it neither Mark Hughes or Jose Mourinho care one iota about the handshake or the non-handshake.”
Manchester United kick off their Champions League campaign against Swiss side Basel tomorrow.
