Jose Mourinho has hit out at former club Tottenham for the “ridiculous” decision to sack him less than a week before the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City three seasons ago.
Tottenham sacked Mourinho after 17 months in charge, just six days before the April 2021 final, which they lost 1-0.
Discussing his time at Spurs, Chelsea and Manchester United on the Obi One podcast with his former Chelsea player John Obi Mikel, Mourinho said the timing of his sacking by Tottenham remained the most inscrutable decision he faced while at a Premier League club worked.
Tottenham Hotspur
“The most ridiculous thing was that a club with an empty trophy room fired me two days before a final,” he said. “That was the one that… come on!
“Tottenham has never won in fifty years. I don’t remember when. I’m two days before a final and I couldn’t do the final. It’s the one that doesn’t smell good.
“I had a plan, but sometimes it doesn’t work. But the reality is that every time I went to Wembley with Chelsea I won. I’ve been there three times with Man United, I won twice.
“So the record was good. It was a stadium and an atmosphere that I can dominate well, because when you go to these big games you have to feel comfortable. You can’t go to these games and feel like the stadium is too big.”
Mourinho, who chose not to recognize the club’s final victory in the 2008 League Cup, does not claim Tottenham would have beaten City if they had stayed with him, but believes they could have beaten Pep Guardiola’s side after they November 2-0.
“I had the experience to help the team, but the final was against Man City, so I would be an idiot now to say we would have won.
“Only a few weeks [five months] before that we won 2-0 against them in our stadium, so the feeling was positive. But it is what it is.”
Manchester United
Mourinho has claimed he was once accused of ‘bullying’ after substituting a United player at half-time.
The Portuguese won the League Cup and Europa League in his first season at Old Trafford in 2016/17 but was sacked after two-and-a-half years at the helm as United were embroiled in poisoning.
“When I was playing for Man United, I changed players at half-time. I made a change and was accused of bullying,” he said, without revealing the player’s identity.
“Of [Nemanja] Matic at Stamford Bridge was on the bench. I put it on at minute 45, I turn it off around minute 70. That is education, that is coaching. That’s doing everything you can to win. I had to [make the] change.
“I laugh at these times, but they are different times 1702911486. Even to be a father, you have to be a different father than your father was to you. You have to change depending on the world.
“I used to say really bad things to these guys! One day I kicked [the massage table] wrong and I did it with my shin, so I was in a lot of pain. I wanted to cry, but the boys looked at me. So I had to bite my finger thinking, ‘I broke my tibia!’”
Mourinho wanted to sell Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial at United, but the decision was rejected by the Old Trafford hierarchy. The former Real Madrid coach had a difficult relationship with then vice-chairman Ed Woodward and suggested he would have been better off with Woodward’s replacement, Richard Arnold. United announced last month that Arnold had stepped down as CEO.
“They still have a CEO who is a great person, who I would have loved to have had during my time there, that is Richard Arnold, who is probably leaving now,” Mourinho said.
“I had him as commercial director, not as CEO, and I would have liked to have him by my side during my time there, but the club was not easy. I have no regrets because I gave it my all.
“The Man United fans know I have given everything, they know how much I love the club. I was there once with Sky, I was sitting in the box giving my commentary and the whole stadium turned to me, clapped and sang for me.”
Chelsea
Mourinho says he didn’t want Kevin De Bruyne or Mohamed Salah to leave Stamford Bridge but that they were “just kids who couldn’t wait” for opportunities.
De Bruyne left Chelsea for Wolfsburg in 2014 and 18 months later joined Manchester City for £55 million and won five Premier League titles and the European Cup with the club. Salah joined from Chelsea in 2016 after loan spells there and at Fiorentina, before returning to England with Liverpool a year later and going on to win the Champions League and Premier League with the Merseyside club.
Both players have established themselves as two of the greats of the modern Premier League era, but Mourinho has no regrets about the situation in which they left Chelsea.
“To be honest, they left because they wanted to leave,” he said. “They left because they didn’t want to wait. History proves that their option was right because they have had the careers they have and achieved a high standard, but sometimes children make such decisions because they can’t wait, or they don’t have the patience to be calm and wait . for the right moment. Sometimes their careers go in the wrong direction.”
On Salah, Mourinho said: “When people say I let Salah go, I say the exact opposite. I bought Salah. I was the one who said buy that guy. He went from Basel to Liverpool, and I fought, I waged war to get him to come to Chelsea.
“Then comes the moment when, as a Chelsea player, you have to perform or wait. He didn’t want to wait, he wanted to be loaned out. And then at some point Chelsea decided to sell. He went to Fiorentina and Roma, and that was not my decision to sell. I said let him go on loan if he feels like he has to play every minute of every game.”
Mourinho said he wanted to keep De Bruyne but the player was determined to go.
“I told the club: no, I don’t want him on loan, I want him with me,” he said. “He stayed with me and started the Premier League season in the starting line-up.
“Then we played the European Super Cup in Prague against Bayern and he didn’t play that match. Then he wants to leave the next day.
“We played the second Premier League game of the season against Manchester United at Old Trafford and drew 0-0. He sat on the bench and played for a few minutes, but that wasn’t enough for him, so he wanted to leave.
“If you’re at Chelsea and you want to leave, go and there will be another one. They were just kids who couldn’t wait, and their career says they were right, but that wasn’t up to me. Probably other guys will say that I pushed them out, but they didn’t.