Chris Smalling, one of the players whose competitive courage has repeatedly been questioned by José Mourinho over the last season, has said it is wrong to allege he is not willing to put his body on the line and insisted he can supply the hard evidence to show the Manchester United manager was wrong.
Smalling chose his words carefully to make sure he did not say anything that could be construed as direct criticism of Mourinho but the centre-half said it was not true, contrary to what his manager had implicitly stated, that he was reluctant to play unless he felt 100% fit.
Mourinho clearly has a different view judging by the number of occasions when he has publicly challenged Smalling, as well as Phil Jones, to speed up their recovery from injuries, at one point stating that if he had the same problem he would declare himself fit the next day.
Smalling was one of the players to whom Mourinho was referring when he complained that the attitude was “cautious, cautious, cautious” and, again, when he talked about the player missing a game against Swansea City last November and spoke at length about there being “a difference between the brave, who want to play at any cost, and the ones for whom a little pain can make a difference”.
Those comments backfired on Mourinho when it emerged Smalling had a broken toe but played with the injury two weeks earlier at Chelsea, a 4-0 defeat when the defender needed two pain-killing injections to be involved.
Smalling, on England duty preparing for the game against Scotland on Saturday, confirmed there had never been an apology from his manager. “No, it’s just professional,” he said. “All of us are professionals and no player wants not to play. That was all just [him being] professional – get on with the rehab and then get out as quickly as you can.
“I think that was directed at everybody. We had a lot of injuries at that time and he was frustrated that quite a lot of players weren’t available. He knew the picture in terms of liaising with the medical staff and he was just frustrated, the same as us players who wanted to be on the pitch.”
Asked about the specific allegation that he would not play unless 100%, Smalling said: “I think in the Chelsea game I proved that I would play with injections.
“I had done the injury, I played on and it turned out there was a break. I had a couple of injections but it got worse and that’s when I had the layoff. You always want to push yourself because you don’t want to let the fans or players down. Obviously he didn’t know the full extent at that time. You just keep playing until physically you can’t and that was the story with the break. But I don’t think he knew the full picture then and once it was cleared up it was all good.”
Mourinho did, however, come back to the same point on several occasions when Smalling damaged a knee later in the season and it did not help that the injury was inflicted when he and Jones tackled one another in a training session with England. “We don’t hold anything back, either for our clubs or on international duty, so injuries are going to come,” Smalling said. “It was unfortunate that we are obviously from the same club. That’s been the story of this season, unfortunately. I’ve been lucky in previous seasons not to be too injury-prone.”
Smalling went on to describe himself as “a leader” and, referring to Mourinho’s public challenges to accelerate his recovery process, he said he would take it as a compliment.
“It comes back to the manager’s frustrations,” he said. “When I’m sitting down with the manager and the medical staff we set out a timeline and then we try to shave it, and push and push … because the longer it takes the fewer games you have. They are always trying to push us as much as they can. The manager has shown his frustration but we [injured players] are just as frustrated.
“It’s good when he shows that frustration because it shows he wants you back out on that pitch. If he wasn’t interested, he would just leave you alone and he wouldn’t say any of these things. So I take it as a positive, as a challenge to get back as quickly as I can – which I would have done anyway, regardless of whatever was said.”