Mourinho should be ashamed of cheap shot at Le Saux
He’s one of the best managers ever, but his legacy is tarnished by cruelty
JOSE MOURINHO is an outstandingly successful manager, one of the best the game of football has ever seen. His standing makes it even more of a shame he cannot quell the vindictiveness, truculence and mocking cruelty that continue to tarnish his achievements. Those traits were never more evident than in his casual assassination of Graeme Le Saux last week.
Mourinho’s pathetic attempt to belittle Le Saux by singling him out from among the six former Chelsea players who chose not to travel to play in a UEFA Cup tie against Hapoel Tel Aviv in Israel in 2001 said a lot more about Mourinho than it did about his intended victim.
‘I didn’t have a single problem within the squad,’ Mourinho told reporters last Monday ahead of Chelsea’s Champions League tie against Maccabi Tel Aviv.
‘I didn’t have a Graeme Le Saux. I had everybody without fears, just wanting to come.’
It looked as though the Chelsea boss, still smarting from Le Saux’s reasoned criticism last month of Mourinho’s behaviour towards Chelsea club doctor Eva Carneiro, had planned a drive-by smearing of the former England left-back as a coward. If that is true, he made yet another in a recent series of spectacular errors of judgment.
Maybe it is just ignorance that is Mourinho’s problem here. Maybe he doesn’t understand the obstacles Le Saux had to overcome to make it as a professional footballer. Maybe he doesn’t understand that Le Saux proved his courage in the game a million times more than Mourinho has ever needed to do.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that when Le Saux arrived at Chelsea in the 1980s, it wasn’t quite the cosmopolitan club it is now.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t know that when a young Le Saux arrived at training each day, he would be greeted by a club employee with the words, ‘All right, poof’.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t know that because Le Saux read The
Guardian and liked going to art galleries, he was subjected to homophobic taunts and was often treated as an outsider and a figure of fun by team-mates.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t know that even though Le Saux isn’t gay, he was persecuted as if he were England’s first gay footballer.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that the treatment of Le Saux showed everybody exactly why so many gay men in the game are scared of coming out.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t know that Robbie Fowler turned his back on Le Saux during a 1999 league game and bent down as Le Saux prepared to take a free-kick, offering Le Saux his backside, humiliating him in front of 40,000 people. Maybe Mourinho doesn’t know that Le Saux routinely had to put up with fans screaming homophobic abuse into his face, when he took corners or throw-ins. Maybe he doesn’t know that ‘Le Saux takes it up the ****’ was the soundtrack to his career.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that Le Saux overcame all that. Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that Le Saux triumphed over all those small-minded, Neanderthal, hate-filled, fear-filled bullies and forged an outstanding career. That’s courage for you. And that’s just part one of this story. Part two is a history lesson. Part two is the idiocy of Mourinho attempting to make a comparison between the climate in Israel today and the situation when Chelsea visited in 2001.
Of course, there are still risks associated with travelling to Israel but when Chelsea played Hapoel Tel Aviv, it was only one month after the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the world was still in a state of collective panic.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that. Maybe he doesn’t know the Ryder Cup was cancelled that year because the American team wouldn’t fly. Maybe he thinks the American golfers were cowards, too. Maybe he doesn’t remember that those were the days we felt the world changing.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t remember that the club gave the Chelsea players the choice of whether they wanted to go or not and that Marcel Desailly, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Albert Ferrer, Emmanuel Petit and William Gallas also decided not to travel.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t remember that on the day Chelsea landed in Tel Aviv in October 2001, the country’s tourism minister, Rehavam Ze’evi, was shot and killed by terrorists at the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem. The situation might be tense now. It was more tense then.
The thing is, everyone has a choice. Everyone has reasons for what they do. Some players back in 2001 decided their first responsibility lay with their families rather than their club. Le Saux’s wife had just given birth to their second child, Lucas. That affected his thinking. Others made different decisions for different reasons.
The players who chose not to go to Israel 14 years ago showed great courage, too. They knew what would be aimed at them, perhaps for the rest of their careers. They knew that men like Mourinho would take cheap shots at them. They did what they thought was right.
The irony, of course, is that Le Saux is still doing what he thinks is right. He still has the courage of his convictions. That is why Mourinho picked him as a target this week, not Desailly or Gallas or Ferrer or Petit or Gudjohnsen.
Mourinho picked on Le Saux because he had the courage to speak out for what he believed in.
‘The biggest disappointment for me,’ Le Saux had said, ‘is that Mourinho doesn’t seem to have reflected on the damage he has done to his own image, the reputation of the club and, more important, the reputation of the entire game.’
LE SAUX had the courage to say what he felt about Mourinho’s treatment of Dr Carneiro even though he would have preferred not to criticise his former club, even though he knew what was coming.
Le Saux loves Chelsea. He played for the club for 12 years. He still has close ties with it. Until very recently, he was a Chelsea ambassador. It can’t have been easy for him to criticise Mourinho about Carneiro. But unlike so many pundits who refuse to talk openly about their former clubs, Le Saux felt it was important to be honest and forthright.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that one reason Le Saux sits on the FA’s inclusion advisory board is that he wants to try to correct some of the injustices and humiliations he was routinely subjected to. Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand what it is to have a cause.
Maybe Mourinho doesn’t understand that one of the reasons Le Saux felt compelled to speak out about Carneiro was that he saw, in her treatment, echoes of the way he was picked on.
Attitudes to homophobia have improved in football. Attitudes to women? Not so much.
Football needs people to stand up and be strong about issues like that. It needs people like Le Saux, people who will not be cowed by men like Mourinho and their cheap shots.