Mourinho pokes fun at rivals with goalpost analogy
CHELSEA manager Jose Mourinho said his Premier Leaguewinning players had not been given the credit they deserved and took time to make fun of the teams that finished below them on Tuesday.
The Portuguese, 52 – whose side finished the season eight points clear of last year’s champions Manchester City – used the end-of-season Chelsea dinner to use a convoluted story to poke fun at City, Arsenal, who finished third, and fourthplaced Manchester United.
To a backdrop of a graphic of a pitch with two goals he addressed first of all Louis van Gaal-managed United – the “plain red-shirted team” – saying they would have preferred to play without goals.
“That team plays really well and the ball goes and goes and goes and the quality of the ball possession is really beautiful, but no goals,” Mourinho said.
“And they ask . . . Fifa to play like this, but they were told it was not possible, that the bigger percentage of ball possession does not win matches and they were not champions.”
City, “the sky blue-shirted team”, at least wanted to play with one goal. “They were fan- tastic and they scored a lot of goals and the goals were coming from every position and they score and they score and they score, but they never conceded goals, because no goal.
“Again, [Fifa] told them: ‘I’m sorry, you can’t be champions because football is with two goals.’ ”
Arsenal, the team with “red shirts, white sleeves” did want to play with two goals. “They were scoring some, they were also conceding some. They were fantastic.
“They scored really beautiful goals, they concede some goals too, and they were almost there,” Mourinho said.
He has also guided Chelsea to the League Cup trophy.
“But they asked [Fifa] to play only January [to] April.
“And they were told: ‘No chance, no chance.’ You have to play between August and May.
“So they couldn’t be champions.”
Which brought him nicely to Chelsea – in blue shirts – and why they had won the title.
He harked back to 2010 when he, as Real coach, defended his tactics against Barcelona and critics accused him of parking the bus in terms of how many men he put behind the ball.
“[Chelsea] wanted to play with the normal rules. To win matches they had to score one more goal than the opponent,” Mourinho said.
“How can you do this? By scoring a lot of goals or not conceding and scoring one.
“And they did it both ways. Scoring a lot, conceding some. Scoring one goal and conceding no goals.
“That was the option and lots of goals were conceding. They played from August till May and sometimes they brought the bus.” – AFP