Jose Mourinho has elaborated in detail regarding the frustration which everyone at Tottenham Hotspur experienced after their midweek match against Fulham was postponed.
Both teams only received confirmation that the Premier League game would not be going ahead just a matter of hours before kick-off.
The Spurs boss voiced his frustration on social media on Wednesday and later described the situation ‘unprofessional’ in his press conference on Friday.
He has now compared the postponement to his experience of coaching the junior football back in his native Portugal when opposition teams or referees sometimes refused to show up.
Mourinho told The Evening Standard: “When I was coaching the Under-13s and Under-15s [teams] 30 years ago, sometimes we go to the game at 9.30 am and the opponent was not there.
“Or sometimes you arrive at the game on one of the rare Portuguese raining Sundays 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.
“You don’t play football and you only know in the last minutes. The same almost happened to us. Almost happened us arriving in the stadium and not playing.
MORE SPURS STORIES
“The day before the game, the press was full of the game is going to be postponed. Even foreign players were coming to me saying that in their own countries the news was very clear that the game was going to be postponed and myself as their boss and [Spurs chairman] Mr Levy as my boss, we couldn’t tell them anything.
“When I say ‘unprofessional’, maybe it’s not the right word. Of course, I am not referring to Fulham, I am referring to the organisation. I don’t think it’s possible [to have] a situation like that. I don’t think it’s possible.
Given that Tottenham are still involved in all four competitions, there is now a shortage of free midweek slots to rearrange the clash against Fulham.
There is a possibility that could Spurs be forced to play two mid-week matches for the second time this season, having done so back in September with a League Cup Clash against Chelsea on Tuesday followed by a Europa League qualifier against Maccabi Haifa on Thursday.
Mourinho insisted the club would flat our refuse if they are handed a similar schedule again.
He added: “The extreme situation that we had 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’.
“We have to refuse to go through [that situation] again at all. It’s impossible, “. 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.
“This is the Premier League. This is a league with big responsibilities in the world. This is the league with, of course, not everybody but in general terms, with the best coaches, with the best clubs, with the best players. With very good referees. I think we have to be good in everything and all be professionals.”
Spurs Web Opinion
One would hope that the Fulham match is scheduled for whenever we next have a free mid-week, even if it means it is pushed back a couple of months. Given that we are entering a busy period of the season when injuries start piling up, asking us to play four matches in a week like we did in September would be extremely unfair.
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
