Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho hit back at fans' criticism
He’s not. He is just the latest in a griping, grumbling tradition of football managers who hate being shown up as prisoners of their own caution.
The most famous put-down was minted long before Mourinho whinged and moaned in the dug-outs of the world’s great stadiums.
“If you want entertainment go and watch a bunch of clowns,” was the bitter response of Stoke City manager Alan Durban when asked about a dreary display by his team in a 2-0 defeat at Arsenal.
The year was 1980. Nothing has changed since in the eternal debate about whether you prefer to watch exciting attacking football, with the risk that entails or whether you think winning matters more than anything, even it means week after week of boring play by your team.
It’s a question of attitude. It always has been.
Pep Guardiola does it one way, the thrilling way, and he has enjoyed phenomenal success in winning trophies.
Before I am a football manager, I am a football lover and can spend a whole day watching football
Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho
Mourinho does it another way, the efficient way, and he has enjoyed phenomenal success if you count up the haul of silver.
When one philosophy is a direct rival of the other, as it is now with Manchester City and Manchester United, the majority will always smile when positive style is triumphant.
That is why Mourinho is so tetchy - sniping at rival managers, sneering at pundits, and even putting a finger to his lips to tell United fans to hush up.
City’s current brilliance shines a damning light on Mourinho’s methods, and he hates that.
He won’t change, of course. He can’t change. Mourinho is more risk averse than the stingiest insurance company assessor.
Listen to his instant thought when asked the other day whether there is pressure on modern football managers to put on a spectacle.
Jose Mourinho plays down spat with Antonio Conte
“A circus?” was the reply from Mourinho, an echo from down the years of Durban.
Entertainment is nothing to him, that’s for clowns; only winning matters.
“Before I am a football manager, I am a football lover and can spend a whole day watching football, watching matches from other competitions, other countries; it doesn’t matter the level,” said Mourinho.
“And for me spectacle is competition --- it is competition. Real competition is what for me is spectacular.
“I prefer to watch a match of an unknown league where it is difficult for me to predict the winner than to watch a match where somebody knows already what is going to happen.
“For me, the priority is competition. Then, what is for you magic? What is for you phenomenal? The way Tottenham played against Real Madrid?
Invalid email
We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our Privacy Policy
GETTY
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has put together an exciting side
“I think recently I saw some team play exactly that way, and it was negative. I saw a team play exactly that way - defending, pressing, controlling all the penetration, playing with five at the back, projecting the full-backs, getting the ball, going forward in quick transitions, attack the last defensive line. I think recently I watched a match like that. But it was not on TV, it was close, it was on the touchline.”
It was a classic Mourinho rant, yet who truly thinks that the performance in United’s 1-0 victory at home to Spurs last weekend (the game he alludes to) was equal to Tottenham’s display in their 3-1 win against Real?
Nobody but the sourpuss of Old Trafford.
More interesting is how Mourinho laid bare his view of the game. Only “competition” can be spectacular he reckons --- not the style of a team.
This is rubbish. How can anyone who loves football not appreciate the thrilling elegance, the magic of the finest teams like Brazil of 1970, Hungary of the 1950s, Netherlands of 1974 and Barcelona when Guardiola was their manager?
How can anyone be serious in suggesting it wasn’t worth watching the teams of Pele, Johan Cruyff and Ferenc Puskas, or indeed the present Manchester City side, because they were likely to win most matches with stylish ease and a cascade of goals?
Mourinho misses the truth. Professional football is always a balance - a balance between competition and entertainment.
A match has to matter; the teams must compete for victory. But it must also entice paying spectators (whether at the ground or on television), and therefore be attractive to watch.
Actually, what Mourinho doesn’t like is risk - the routine risks taken in every game by Manchester City that lead to magic goals - and to them being talked about with wonder all across Europe right now.
One moment in the past week illustrates the point. When his United team had a penalty towards the end of the Champions League match against Benfica, striker Romelu Lukaku wanted the chance to end a five-match goal drought.
Mourinho signalled from the bench for someone else to have responsibility. He didn’t want to take the risk of Lukaku shooting, even though a goal would have surely boosted the player’s confidence.
The no-risk mentality has given Mourinho a mighty career, but he wants more. He craves admiration as well as trophies, and that will continue to elude him.
Joey Barton "BAFFLED" by Gareth Southgate appointment
He can damn the pundits as ‘specialists’ and ‘Einsteins’, and he can tell doubting fans to shush, even though they support a club that noisily describes its stadium as the Theatre of Dreams.
What he can’t change is reality. Football people adore what Guardiola is doing at Manchester City. They have only grudging respect Jose Mourinho, and that is how it will stay.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
INJURIES at club level have already given a boost to England manager Gareth Southgate this season, with the emergence of Harry Winks and Fabian Delph as consistently excellent players at Spurs and Manchester City respectively.
If truth be told, he could do with a couple more.
It seems that could be the only way that Jack Wilshere gets regular Premier League action at Arsenal, and a chance to prove his worth for the World Cup.
It is also the only immediate hope for the two outstanding creative teenagers of England’s Under-17 World Cup glory --- Phil Foden at City and Jadon Sancho over at Borussia Dortmund.
Eddie Jones talks about his Rugby world cup preparation
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
WARREN GATLAND is a rugby union man as tough and traditional as they come.
He brooks no shirkers or faint-hearts but even he is concerned by the physicality and the injury epidemic of the sport.
“I’ve been on the sidelines of some big games and even I’m scared watching the collisions,” he confessed last week. “We don’t know the impact rugby will have long term on these young men.”
Solutions will not be easy, but Gatland is certain there should be no extension to the length of the season, and he advocates substitutes only for injury in matches so that players have to look after themselves to last for 80 minutes.
