Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho admits his side’s Champions League opener against Inter Milan, at the Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday, carries an emotional dimension for him. Just not during the 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Asked whether facing his former club, the side he won the historic treble with, stirs anything in him, Mourinho told the press conference: “After the match, yes. During the match, no. During the match, it is just another game.”<\/p>\n
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The Portuguese had labelled his players “naive” after the defeat to Real Betis in La Liga, pointing to their failure to show the referees they had been pulled or struck, the way the Andalusian side’s players did in his view. He insisted the word was not a criticism.<\/p>\n
“It is also to do with the cultural aspect,” he explained. “Perhaps my word ‘naive’ was understood as something negative, but I did not say it by way of criticism, rather I was describing the reality as it is. And tomorrow you will understand well what I meant. You will understand it very easily.”<\/p>\n
“I want an answer from those responsible”<\/p>\n
A journalist asked him to clarify. Mourinho would not play along, at least not directly. “I do not want to talk about the refereeing standard. Excuse me, because I am going to dodge your question, but I will answer in another way.”<\/p>\n
“Since this question was not put to me, I say it now: we lost to Betis because we did not convert our attacking output into goals. That is that,” he continued. “But the penalty\u2026 why was it not reviewed again? Is it because the VAR video technology does not know the laws of the game\u2026 or because it did not want to? This is a matter I would like those responsible to answer.”<\/p>\n
His frustration deepened. “Why? If the VAR did not ask for the penalty to be reviewed because it did not know the law, then it should leave and give up the job. And if it did not ask for it to be reviewed because it did not want to, that is worse. Then there is something worse than that: if he did not know the law, why did he not call the referee to the review screen? The matter is a little strange.”<\/p>\n
He then offered the benefit of the doubt. “I want to go in the direction of good faith, and to assume that he did not know the player was inside the penalty area. I prefer to interpret the matter that way. But if that is the reason, the referee is not the one who is supposed to take the decision, rather the VAR is the one who should do it. Because in a few weeks or months, if a similar situation happens, the penalty will be reviewed.”<\/p>\n
Crucially, Mourinho refused to pin the defeat on the incident. “And I want to make clear that we did not lose because of this incident, because we might have wasted the penalty even if it had been reviewed. But as Real Madrid’s coach, and as someone who works in football, I would like to know why the penalty was not reviewed. I want those responsible to answer me on this matter.”<\/p>\n
One more grievance followed. “And there is another matter in this match that has nothing to do with the previous incident: why did Real Madrid’s captain get a yellow card? When Vinicius went towards the referee, and before he reached him, the referee brandished the card in his face. I would like to know the reason.”<\/p>\n
“Why are we always told that the team captain has the right to approach the referee, politely, to ask for clarification or an explanation?” he added. “Excuse me for using your question to talk about this matter, but I wanted to comment on this decision.”<\/p>\n
The Inter Milan clash<\/p>\n
Back to Inter. Asked about his own appetite for the tie, Mourinho said: “At this moment, it is not an ordinary match for me, as I said earlier. After the match it will be, but during it, no.”<\/p>\n
“I do not think that during the match, anyone will talk about the person sitting on the Real Madrid bench. During the match, I will not think about anything from the past,” he continued. “Chivu (Inter Milan’s coach) will always be one of my men. I am very happy for him, and for what he is achieving. I will greet him before the match and after it. But during the match\u2026 it is only the match.”<\/p>\n
You can discuss the topics and news in greater depth in the “Kooora” forums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho admits his side’s Champions League opener against Inter Milan, at the Santiago Bernabeu…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[187,2009,1414,85,82,1139,1487,83,29491,2420],"class_list":["post-82127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-champions-league","tag-inter","tag-j-mourinho","tag-laliga","tag-madrid","tag-real-betis","tag-real-betis-vs-real-madrid","tag-real-madrid","tag-real-madrid-vs-inter","tag-vinicius-junior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}