Chelsea look set to end this season without any silverware barring a miracle in the Premier League after they crashed out of the Champions League to Atletico Madrid last night.
"One minute in the second half decided everything," Mourinho claimed.
"A minute where the Atletico goalkeeper makes an impossible save to a John Terry header then the penalty that kills the game.
"After that there was only one team with morale high, knowing with half an hour left they had control.
"For about 60 minutes, we had the game, but semi-finals and important matches are made of details and this was a very important detail.
"Congratulations to them because they are a very good side and what they are doing in the Spanish league is fantastic."
Is this Mourinho admitting that his decision to loan Courtois to Madrid this season was the wrong choice? What he is essentially saying is that if Chelsea were the team that had the Belgium keeper then that save would not have been made and so Chelsea would go on to control the tie.
Mourinho may be right that the penalty changed the tie, it meant that Chelsea needed two goals, and after setting up defensively that was always going to be a very tough ask. What would be nice to see now is for Mourinho to admit that he got Chelsea's tactics in the second leg completely wrong. The first leg, despite coming away without an away goal is still a decent result for Chelsea, all they needed to do was to win at home, however playing defensively was not the way to do this. Mourinho has been praised enough this season, despite the fact that he is probably not going to win anything, it would now be nice if he could put his hands up and say "this time I got it wrong."
Mourinho made a name for himself the first time he was at Chelsea for his playing of the media in order to give his team the best possible advantage in games, the league and particularly with referees. However, some of his comments in recent weeks have been branded as childish and even as a Chelsea fan it has got me questioning whether he is losing his head.
"Mike Dean's performance was unbelievable and when referees have unbelievable performances it's fair to congratulate them," he added.
"He came here with one objective, the objective to make a fantastic performance and he did that.
"Congratulations to Mike Riley, because he's the referees' boss, and what they are doing during the whole season is fantastic, especially in the last couple of months, especially in matches involving the teams that were in the title race - it's absolutely fantastic."
His comments about the referee after the Sunderland game are ridiculous to say the least. Mourinho is being sarcastic about the performance of the referee, despite the fact that the penalty given to Sunderland at the end of the game was blatant, it was Chelsea who threw away their best chance at the title, not Mike Dean.
What is the point in these comments? They cannot help the team in any way. The only reason that could even be thought of for Mourinho coming up with this load of nonsense is to relieve the pressure on his players and deflect away from the fact that he has lost his first ever league match at Stamford Bridge.
However, I am not so sure that this time it has worked. People are not going to forget the fact that Chelsea have now lost to Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sunderland, separated by wins over Arsenal and Liverpool.
In the big games this season, Mourinho has been called a tactical genius for masterminding wins over every team in the top four, however it is the lower half sides that have ruined Chelsea's title race and Mourinho does not seem to know what to do or say about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment