Browned off by Mourinho
EVERY match-going Liverpool and Manchester United fan knows their meeting hasn’t been the “biggest game on earth” for a long time now. If it ever was. It’s actually a tribal hate match where everyone fears defeat. So the hype that preceded last Saturday’s game – especially from Sky – was extraordinary, even by modern English football’s standards. Particularly as the visitors were managed by Jose Mourinho, who rarely takes his side to a bitter rival and attacks. And never at Anfield, where he senses the crowd give such an edge on the big occasions that a draw is a fine result. Then spins it as though we’ve been privileged to watch a master tactician at work. As in, after he’d chained nine men behind the ball on Saturday: “One thing is an entertaining game for fans, another thing is entertaining game for the people who read football in a different way.” No one believed him, though, and haven’t for a while. In 2007, after the second Champions League semi-final in three years between Mourinho’s Chelsea and Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool at Anfield, former Real Madrid coach Jorge Valdano described the games as like watching “sh*t hanging from a stick”. Mourinho coming to Anfield always has been and always will be. Even if he gets his desire to one day manage PSG and brings the most expensive side in the world to Anfield, the brown stick will still end up on the pitch. Unless Sky want a repeat of Match of the Day taking the mickey out of their hype – by putting the “British El Clasico” last in their running order – next time they should remember Valdano’s words.