A penny for Jose Mourinho’s thoughts right now.
The Chelsea boss was still seething on Sunday afternoon when he appeared on Sky Sports. So you can only imagine how he’s feeling now the English FA have decided not to retrospectively punish Ashley Barnes’ challenge on Nemanja Matic.
The Serbian midfielder was red carded for his reaction to the tackle, which Mourinho labelled a ‘criminal’ act by the Burnley player.
In fairness, Mourinho has a perfectly valid point, it was an ugly challenge and it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say careers have been ended for less.
So, as Mourinho is clearly so opposed to dangerous tackles, we thought we’d look back at some instances when it was his player on the other end of an overly aggressive challenge.
Surely Mourinho would rightly denounce ‘criminal’ tackles, even if they were by his own players?
Last season Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel landed this horror challenge on Mikel Arteta. Mourinho, being so against tackles of this nature went straight into the post match press conference, denounced the challenge and spoke about how the Arsenal midfielder’s career was threatened, right?
Of course not. Mourinho basically told reporters to grow up and stop being a bunch of little prissy girls. ‘The tackle was a hard one, an aggressive one’, the Chelsea boss said. ‘Football is for men’.
But, these things happen, people say stuff in the heat of the moment and surely Mourinho has in the past collared his players for over aggressive and potentially dangerous tackles, right?
No, wrong again. Gary Cahill landed this crunching tackle on Alexis Sanchez last October, which angered Arsene Wenger so much it led to a sideline confrontation between the two managers.
Cahill only received a yellow card and Mourinho said in the post-match press conference that Arsenal were ‘lucky not to finish with eight men’. He also praised the performance of referee Martin Atkinson for, in his view, correctly dismissing Gunners defender Laurent Koscielny.
That’s the same Martin Atkinson who’s performance angered Mourinho so much this weekend, and who’s ‘like the lawyer who is consistent because he lost 15 of 15 cases. You don’t want that lawyer’.
The Chelsea manager also told the interviewer that Wenger was wrong to ‘press the referee into giving the opponent a red card. ‘I don’t think that is fair’ Mourinho said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtE9kcFvFbM
Mourinho didn’t have any issue either less than two months later when Cahill connected with this challenge on Hull City’s Sone Aluko, which, again, only warranted a yellow card.
And Mourinho had a similar approach during his first spell at Stamford Bridge. Back in December 2005, during a Champions League game between Chelsea and Liverpool, Michael Essien landed probably the nastiest tackle of the lot on Didi Hamann.
‘It was the worst tackle I have experienced in my career’, the then Liverpool midfielder said. ‘I really feared that I might have broken my leg’.
UEFA retrospectively imposed a two match ban on Essien, but what did Mourinho make of it?
‘I didn’t see Michael’s tackle so I cannot give my version’.
He did, however, see a tackle by Mohamed Sissosko on Chelsea’s Eidur Gudjohnson. ‘That was a bad one’ Mourinho said. ‘A very high challenge’.
‘I was telling the Liverpool bench that they were crying all the game,’ Mourinho added. ‘They needed to sit down a little bit and relax’.
Now, we’re not saying Mourinho’s a hypocrite, but…
