Real question: Why is Mourinho a bad loser?
PARIS — Sounding like a stuck record by a lovesick crooner, Jose Mourinho wailed why, oh, why? In the warped view of Real Madrid’s coach, the dice are stacked in Barcelona’s favor. “They have got great power. The rest of us have no chance,” he said.
And some of Europe’s most respected referees — Mourinho rattled off several of them — are seemingly part of some kind of pro-Barca plot.
Well, Jose, here’s the real question: Why are you such a bad loser?
There is simply no excuse for it, and UEFA should now make it painfully clear that his hinted-at conspiracy theories, his mutterings of “scandalous goings-on” and suggestion that the European football governing body is cuddly with Madrid’s historic rival are unacceptable.
“To win this way must leave a bad taste,” the self-decreed “Special One” said acidly of Barcelona’s deserved 2-0 Champions League semifinal victory Wednesday, showing that he’s not so special, after all. Or, to be more precise, not a good sport.
Shame, really, because Mourinho is a fine football coach, with a record of trophies and victories that speaks eloquently of his talents for organizing and motivating players, no matter their nationality or the culture he’s operating in.
In crafting winning teams in four countries — Portugal, England, Italy and Spain — the multilingual Portuguese has proved himself to be the ultimate European.
He seems a nice enough guy, too, who will always have friends in the press box by providing an endless diet of controversy and flashes of charm and wit.
Mourinho, anti-football? Rubbish. There’s no such thing. Winning is all that counts. As Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger can attest, hoping to outplay or out-pass this Barcelona side is suicide, since the blue and reds so rarely share the ball. Outfoxing them is a more viable option. And Mourinho is as foxy as they come.
He need not apologize, especially after the 5-0 Catalan slap in the face that Madrid got last November, for deciding that the only way to beat the Barcelona machine is to break it.
Be brutish and defensive, stop them from playing. And Mourinho’s scheme looked like it might work before midfielder Pepe’s second-half red card opened gaps that Barcelona swarmed into.
One of the true things Mourinho said in his sour-grapes post-match news conference was that Barcelona “will kill us again” if Madrid plays an open game in the semifinal second leg at the Camp Nou next Tuesday.
Great coach, but Mourinho would be more of a truly special one if he was a better sport, too.
John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester@ap.org.