10 contradictory statements and moments from Jose Mourinho

#9 19th Century Boy

Mourinho hated Sam Allardyce's tactics

When Sam Allardyce’s West Ham side played a heavily defensive game in order to take a 0-0 draw with Mourinho’s Chelsea side back in the 2013/14 season, the Portuguese boss was extremely unhappy in his post-match press conference, even for his standards. He accused Allardyce’s side of

“Playing football from the 19th century” and went on to claim that West Ham’s tactics didn’t “feel the quality of the Premier League”.

For his part, ‘Big Sam’ simply laughed off the insults and stated that he “didn’t give a shite”. But hilariously, Mourinho’s rage against Allardyce’s defensive tactics seemed a little ill-placed given his own reputation for defensive play at times. Most notably Mourinho had used a highly defensive tactic to stifle Barcelona during his period as manager of Inter Milan in their 2009/10 Champions League winning season, and he’d even “parked the bus” in a 0-0 draw with David Moyes’s Manchester United side in 2013.

And a few years down the line, Mourinho even admitted to a plan to “park the bus” in United’s game with Manchester City in December 2017. When asked if he planned to deploy an attacking side, he said “it’s not true”, and then went on to explain that when City had the ball, his side planned to “defend with eleven”. Could that sound like West Ham’s tactic from 2014? Does it sound like 19th-century football to anyone else? Perhaps in Mourinho’s eyes, it would.