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While football managers moaning about referees to deflect from their own teams’ shortcomings is nothing new, few do performative, wounded, righteous indignation with quite the same brooding intensity and petulance as José Mourinho. It’s been more than two decades since his moaning preceded a pile-on from angry fans whose threats forced the Swedish referee Anders Frisk into early retirement and in the interim, a steady stream of red cards, touchline bans and mournful post-match monologues have rendered his rap-sheet for badgering officialdom longer than a roll of Andrex toilet paper. On Sunday, Mourinho was at it again, following his 10-man Real Madrid side’s 2-1 defeat at the hands of their bitter city rivals Atlético. He arrived at his post-match presser armed with a sheet of A4 featuring screen-grabs of two tackles made by Atlético players that he felt should have resulted in red cards. “We can save ourselves the bother of the press conference because the story is right here,” he harrumphed, waving his piece of paper in front of assembled hacks before embarking on a paranoid tirade about Spanish match officials continuing to have it in for the put-upon, plucky underdogs of Real Madrid.
OK, I’m putting my head above the parapet here, but I disagree with the prevailing view that Thomas Tuchel’s tactics and substitutions led to England’s defeat to Argentina in the Geopolitics World Cup (yesterday’s Football Daily). I believe it was individual errors and an obsession with Lionel Messi that caused the two goals conceded. Goal one: Djed Spence and Harry Kane were doubling up on Messi but Elliot Anderson was unnecessarily drawn over to Messi, which made space for Enzo Fernández to score. Poor defending. Goal two: when marking Messi, Spence and Nico O’Reilly were in parallel with each other rather than being diagonal. This was also poor defending and enabled Messi to cross” – Mike Harrison.
Of course, like all right-minded people, I only get my football news from Big Website, but I did chance upon this piece from the wonderfully named Argentinian outlet, Diario Olé. Apparently, the Argentinian FA (which once held an election between two candidates with its 75 members that ended in a 38-38 tie) has announced yet another new trophy, the Recopa de Campeones, a round-robin competition between the winner of the Copa Argentina, SuperCopa Argentina and SuperCopa Internacional, which means Argentinian football looks like this. The late, great Maurits Cornelis Escher would be proud” – Noble Francis.
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