Did anyone really expect Jose Mourinho to apologize to the media and public for his comments on his Chelsea strikers and the quip he made about Samuel Eto’o? This is a man who admits nothing, confesses to nothing, with the two most important things on his mind being the success of his team and his own personal image. Decency? Honesty? Morals? That’s for inferior managers.
Jose Mourinho is right about the journalistic ethics of this whole saga. Things he says in private to a sponsor shouldn’t become headlines, but Mourinho’s attempts to deflect the fire from him to the press by pretty much insulting everyone who sat with him in that room during the prematch interview were easy to see through. He’s uncomfortable with what he has said, even though the magnitude of effect it will have on his players might not be as great as some might think.
But that is where the right part of this story ends for Mourinho. He might say that his remarks regarding his strikers and specifically Eto’o were all made in humor and as a joke between him and the people at the Hublot sponsorship event, but he didn’t seem too amused when it all started, and for someone who knows how seriously and feverishly the media treat everything he says, letting out things like that into the open is simply a rookie mistake in PR, not something a savvy and experienced man like Mourinho should make.
Maybe he was caught off guard. Mourinho feels comfortable in England. The press love him and pamper him, allowing him to weave his tales without being challenged about what comes out of his mouth. His words are the truth, reality, and that’s it. Things were different at Inter and Italy, and especially when he was in Spain with Real Madrid. He was challenged ,questioned and treated in a manner he doesn’t think he deserves. The way Mourinho is viewed outside of England and in the rest of Europe is very different.
This will pass. Just like his problems at Real Madrid with certain players, although not all of them, and just like other issues he’s had over the years. Samuel Eto’o played well under Mourinho at Inter, and got his chance to be on a top European team again because of the Portuguese manager. As for Torres and Ba, they don’t really have anything to complain about: They’re really having a lot of problems scoring.
But once again the problematic side of this manager comes out. Not the comments he made, which anyone could have done, but his reaction. Always on the attack, and always trying to cover up parts of the truth by dishing out dirt of his own. As Ernest Hemingway once put it, there is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. Humility, even for a proud man like Mourinho, is something that needs to be part of the agenda from time to time.