“I made 11 mistakes with my team selection. 11 mistakes!” – Jose Mourinho, during his second reign at Chelsea
When teams fail to live up to expectations on the pitch, it is usually the manager who takes the blame. Most managers usually do or blame it on a collective team failure.
But history has shown that when things do not go Mourinho’s way, they tend to fall apart. And the Portuguese boss resorts to various schemes to get his point across, using the media microphone as a weapon and his words as ammo to target certain players.
We look at five players who have been at the receiving end of Mourinho’s wrath in recent years.
#1 Luke Shaw – Manchester United
After a promising start to the 2016/17 Premier League season for Jose Mourinho and Manchester United, the Red Devils’ campaign started to unravel in disastrous fashion. An underwhelming performance against Manchester City in the derby was followed by a hollow loss to Feyenoord before Watford tore them apart at Vicarage Road.
Mourinho’s joy at taking over the Old Trafford club soon turned into frustration and, as he has done before, he had a field day with the press by putting the blame on certain players. And Luke Shaw was singled out for criticism, even if he did not name him explicitly.
“For the second goal, [Watford winger Nordin] Amrabat on the right side, our left-back is 25 metres distance from him instead of five metres,” Mourinho explained. “But even at 25 metres, then you have to jump and go press. But no, we wait.”
Shaw was substituted immediately after conceding the goal and a heated exchange with Mourinho as he tried to explain what went wrong. United went on to lose 3-1 and a number of players were criticised but Shaw was Mourinho’s main culprit.
What many fans were not aware of was that Shaw has been playing through a recurrent groin injury. So why play him at all and then make him shoulder the blame when things went awry? It comes as no surprise that even some United players were shocked by his treatment of the 21-year-old defender.
#2 Iker Casillas – Real Madrid
When Mourinho was in charge of Real Madrid, the rivalry between the club and Barcelona reached an all-time low and El Clasicos were remembered more for incidents that sparked controversy rather than the football on the pitch. The poisonous atmosphere was only allowed to develop as more Clasicos were played when the big two in La Liga also met each other in the Champions League.
The enmity between the players of Real Madrid and Barcelona soon threatened to spill over into the Spanish national team and before a rift appeared in the world champions’ side, Real goalkeeper Iker Casillas decided to mend bridges and spoke to Xavi and Carles Puyol over the phone following another Clasico that had ended in a mass brawl.
“What I said to Xavi was 'look, if we keep going like this, we're going to burden Spanish football with the image we give with two teams like Madrid and Barcelona’,” Casillas explained.
“I was the captain of Real Madrid but also of Spain. Everyone can believe what they want. I have a club I owe but I also have a national team.”
The phone call did not sit too well with Mourinho and the furious Portuguese boss soon benched the club legend in favour of Diego Lopez.
“Would I do anything differently if I had the chance to do the past three years over again? I should have brought in Diego Lopez after my first year,” Mourinho said. “We didn`t do enough to sign him. It`s a real shame.
“They hired me to be a soccer coach and a soccer coach has certain responsibilities, one of which is to pick the team. For me, I like Diego Lopez better as a goalkeeper than Iker Casillas.”
#3 Cristiano Ronaldo – Real Madrid
Mourinho’s reigns at various clubs usually come to a bitter end and even his final season with Real Madrid saw the manager estranged from half his squad after his treatment of Casillas. He had lost the dressing room and Mourinho had retaliated like a lone man fighting a losing battle with nothing to lose.
And even their star player Cristiano Ronaldo was not spared. Even though Ronaldo was having one of his finest seasons on an individual level, scoring 55 goals in all competitions, Mourinho tore into his compatriot for not sticking to his plan.
“I had only one problem with him, very simple, very basic,” Mourinho explained. “When a coach criticises a player from a tactical viewpoint trying to improve what in my view could have been improved and at that moment he didn't take it very well because he thinks he knows everything and the coach cannot help him to develop more.”
Mourinho wasn’t done, though. He even compared Cristiano to the Brazilian Ronaldo, who Mourinho had coached when he was an assistant coach.
“I was [a] manager for the first time in 2000 but, before that, I was assistant in big clubs and with big managers and coaching the best players in the world. I was 30 and I was coaching Ronaldo.
“Not this one, the real one – the Brazilian Ronaldo!”
#4 Juan Mata – Chelsea
When Juan Mata arrived at Chelsea, he reinvigorated the midfield that only had Frank Lampard to lean on when the going got tough. Taking on the no.10 jersey, the Spaniard went on to win two Player of the Year awards at the club. Everything seemed to be going right until Mourinho returned for a second stint.
Tasked with bringing the Blues back to the top of the league following a few years of mediocre finishes, Mourinho went back to basics, switched tactics and Mata suffered as a result.
“I don't like the way Chelsea were playing the last couple of years,” Mourinho had said. “The club doesn't like it and we want to change. We want to play a different style. The past is history.
Mourinho expected his players, especially his midfielders, to put in a hard shift. And Mata’s slight build became his weakness while his technical quality was overlooked. In the end, he lost his spot in the starting XI to Brazilian midfielder Oscar who was willing to track back and harry the opponents to win the ball back.
“Juan has to work and adapt to a certain style of play because I’m not ready to change Oscar’s position,” Mourinho explained. “Juan has to learn to play the way I want to play, to be more consistent.”
Mata would soon be sold to Manchester United for £37.1m but he now finds himself under the scanner again after Mourinho took over from Louis van Gaal this summer. He has been benched again in favour of other players in midfield and struggles to find game time.
#5 Pepe – Real Madrid
When Casillas was lambasted in the press by Mourinho, it caused players in the dressing room to take sides. Real defender Pepe had sided with the Spanish goalkeeper and had publicly supported him through the ordeal.
That did not sit too well with Mourinho and he used the press to attack his player yet again. Mourinho claimed that Pepe was simply frustrated because the younger Raphael Varane was a better bet at centre-back than Pepe.
“You just have to be a normal person like me or like almost everyone in this room to know that we are talking about frustration,” Mourinho had said. “His problem has a name: Raphael Varane.
“It's not easy for a man of 31 years, with status and history, to be trampled over by a kid of 19. But that's the law of life. On a sporting level, Pepe's life has changed. I have no problem with him.
“I understand that it's not an easy situation but I have to try to be honest and I think that there are very few people who don't think that the future of Real Madrid in defence is Varane with Sergio Ramos.”
Pepe himself has since gone from strength to strength and was also one of the best players at Euro 2016 when Portugal took home the title for the first time. Last week, he was questioned about his relationship with his former manager and he mentioned that he was glad Mourinho’s reign in Madrid came to an end.
“You all know what happened with Mourinho,” the centre-back explained. “But it is in the past now. I was strong and got over it.
“Under Mourinho, people hated us when we got out there on the pitch. It lasted three years and thank God it went very quick.”
