Mourinho reveals why he wants a Bayern Munich re-match in the Champions League

Following Tottenham’s 3-1 defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich in their final Champions League group game, new head coach Jose Mourinho admitted that the team he named for the match wasn’t ideal but one that he had to go with anyway.

The 56-year-old made several changes to the side and started with the likes of Juan Foyth, Kyle Walker-Peters, Giovani Lo Celso and Ryan Sessegnon for the first time since he arrived at the club.

Speaking during the post-match press conference, Mourinho told Football.London: “This team is not what I call a team. What I call a team is when you prepare together, you work together, you develop principles together. This team that we played tonight is a team that is not a perfect puzzle.

“We just tried to organise a team so that we could rest some players and give conditions for the more experienced people to perform and have some security. So Foyth, Alderweireld, Lo Celso, Sessegnon, Eriksen, Dier, we tried to build something to give them some security and give us some options to fight for a result.

“I think in the first half they had chances to score some more goals but we were one minute away from going in to half-time at 1-1. When I played Son, I was going to bring him on at 2-1.

“We conceded the third at the moment Sonny was coming on. So we tried to build something that gave us the conditions to fight for a result.”

The Spurs head coach admitted that he decided not to remind his players of the 7-2 defeat to Bayern in the reverse fixture in October.

He also insisted that he hopes to come up against Bayern in the latter stages of the competition.

Mourinho added: “I tried to ignore what happened in the first match. I tried to hide it from the players, I didn’t show any image of that. I didn’t analyse with the players anything from that match, but it was important for us to come here and get out with a result, with the minimum of dignity.

“My wish is that we can be back and if we can be back it has to be for the quarter or semi-final, because we cannot play them in the next round. So my wish is to be back for a proper match, for a match that we all like.”

Spurs Web Opinion

I too hope that we get Bayern in the quarters or the semis so that we get an opportunity to avenge the 7-2 defeat earlier in the season. I genuinely believe that we will be more than a match for them when we are at our best as we managed to catch their defence out on a couple of occasions last evening despite naming a weakened team.

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