Gameweek 14 had two games postponed. Manchester City vs Everton as well as Fulham vs Jose Mourinho’ Tottenham Hotspur were called off after City and Fulham reported positive cases before their respective fixtures.
Jose Mourinho vented out his frustration by taking to Instagram to complain about the uncertainty hours before the game.
In the press conference that followed Mourinho compared the situation to u-13 games. He lashed out at the ‘organization’ for keeping everyone puzzled till the last minute.
What Jose Mourinho said?
Mourinho complained about the unprofessionalism at such a high level.
When I was coaching the under-13s and under-15s 30 years ago, sometimes we go to the game at 9.30am and the opponent was not there. Or sometimes you arrive in the game in one of the rare Portuguese raining Sundays.
You arrive there and the referee didn’t report. I grew up with these situations and was very frustrated for everyone. Especially for the kids that you want to play football and don’t play football and you only know in the last minutes.”
Jose Mourinho
With the fixtures postponed, the schedule seems more cramped than usual. Tottenham are vying for the top 4 as well as the Europa League.
Mourinho went on with his rant saying that team rotation is not as easy as it seems.
The extreme situation that we had in pre-season and nobody spoke a lot about it because probably people thought, ‘OK, it’s a Europa League play-off match, Tottenham has two teams, Tottenham can play against Maccabi with the second team and still win it. But the situation that we had to go through…we have to refuse to go through again at all. It’s impossible, it’s inhuman.
We cannot accept at all if any Einstein comes with the idea of us playing four matches in one week, to do the same that we did before – of playing Premier League, second game, third game and fourth game with one day in between. Impossible.
Jose Mourinho
Whatever said and done, the safety of the player should be the primary focus. While protecting them from the virus is vital, protecting them from overworking their bodies should be a priority too.
