10 contradictory statements and moments from Jose Mourinho

#8 Don’t cry for me, Antonio Conte!

Chelsea boss Antonio Conte - tears not pictured

When you’ve got an Arsenal legend like Charlie Nicholas jumping into an argument to defend Chelsea’s manager, then you know you’ve got a problem. Or an inflammatory remark from Jose Mourinho in this case. After Manchester United’s 1-0 win over Benfica in the Champions League in October 2017, Mourinho hit out at managers who complain about injuries – a thinly veiled dig at Chelsea boss Antonio Conte, who had been doing just that in the press.

"And there is another situation, maybe I'm guilty of it: I never speak about injuries.Other managers, they cry, they cry, they cry when some player is injured. I don't cry.I think the way to do it is to ignore the players that are injured, is to focus on the players that are available. It is to give confidence to the players that are available".

Conte immediately responded, telling Mourinho that he should focus on his own side and not on Chelsea as he had done in the past, but Nicholas went one further, claiming Mourinho “cried all of last season at Manchester United – he actually got it to a fine art at one stage, he always looked miserable”. And Nicholas wasn’t wrong, as Mourinho proved just two months later.

In December 2017 – after losing both Romelu Lukaku and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to injury – Mourinho stated

"The boys are trying, but we have lots of problems in the team and we lost Lukaku and Ibrahimovic for a month, Michael Carrick, it was in pre-season when he last played in the league and I don’t remember him playing during the season so we have problems. We have difficulty to rotate players."

Does that sound like crying about injuries to anyone else? I’d say so.