Strap in, this is a vintage rant
José Mourinho was surprisingly calm and collected in his post-match interview given to Sky Sports following his Tottenham side’s 3-1 defeat to Manchester United on Sunday afternoon. But he was seemingly unable to keep a lid on his bubbling fury after hearing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer accuse Heung-min Son of “conning” the referee.
The incident in question occurred in the first half, when Son dropped to the ground after catching a flailing arm in the face from Scott McTominay. The contact was minimal, but the referee judged it to be enough to disallow the goal that came just seconds later after watching the incident back on his pitch side monitor. PGMOL issued an explanation, stating that McTominay was “reckless”.
“We weren’t conned, the referee was,” said Solskjaer.
“We shouldn’t be conned. I have to say, if my son stays down for three minutes and he needs his 10 mates to help him up, he won’t get any food.”
This didn’t go down well with Mourinho, who was surely delighted deep down to be able to deflect the attention away from another incidence of his side throwing away a lead.
You’d hope that Solskjaer was not speaking literally regarding starving his children, but Mourinho was keen to slam the off key remark, saying Son is lucky to have a father better than Solskjaer.
“I just want to say Sonny is very lucky that his father is a better person than Ole because I think a father – and I am a father – you have always to feed your kids. It does not matter what they do. If you have to steal to feed your kids, you steal,” said Mourinho in his post-match press conference over Zoom.
“I am very, very disappointed. With me, like we say in Portugal, bread is bread and cheese is cheese, have told Ole already what I think of his comments.
“I told Ole already this because I met him a few minutes ago. If it was me saying that player A, B or C from another club – if, as he says that if it was my son that I won’t give him dinner tonight or something like that – what would be the level of the reaction.
“First of all let me tell you something. I am very, very surprised that after the comments Ole made on Sonny, you don’t ask me about it.”
Mourinho then accused the press of not treating him in the same way as other managers because they didn’t ask him to comment on the matter.
“It is very, very sad and I think it is really sad that you don’t ask me about it. It is really sad that you don’t have the moral honesty the same way as you treat others,” the Portuguese said.
Solskjaer’s comments were weird, Mourinho’s rant in response was probably weirder. But this is Mourinho now. No tactics, no coherence. Just bizarre comments and failed mind games.
