Mourinho on skipping Benfica dressing room: I don’t make up stories | OneFootball

José Mourinho analyzed the Benfica’s victory over Nacional (2-1), a match from the 12th round of the Liga Betclic played this Saturday, November 29, at the Estádio da Madeira. Asked about the fact that he went to meet the players at the end of the game, contrary to what he usually does, the coach explained why he didn’t go straight to the locker room.

"You already know me, I don’t beat around the bush, I don’t make up stories. Today, if we had lost this game, I would have congratulated my players. The only thing they didn’t do, if we had lost 1-0, was score a goal. They did everything right. On a tough pitch, against a tough opponent, with a style of play I won’t comment on, because I have nothing to say about how my opponents play, it was tough to be losing 1-0, which was completely unfair to the game, a hard blow... I took a risk, but they accepted the risk," the coach began, speaking about the role of Georgiy Sudakov.

Sudakov started on the left, then moved to the number 10 position, and then in the last 15 minutes, when Schjelderup came on, he moved to the number 8. Just to give an example of the level of commitment from the players. Today, if I lost the game, it would obviously be a huge frustration."

The coach also took a jab at the ‘commentators’: "I don’t even want to imagine what all those who comment on football in Portugal would say. I don’t even want to imagine what they would say if we had lost the game. But for me, what matters is what I see, what I feel, and what I saw, what I felt, was a good team playing well, with its limitations, because we do have limitations. When we play against a team with an ultra-low block, with big guys, with good defenders in the box, sometimes we lack a reference point, with a different profile from what we have. But we looked for solutions, we played wide, we brought people in from behind, we put in technical players to find small spaces in a super-closed defense, and the players deserved it. That’s why I celebrated so much, because I wanted to immediately give them that recognition, because the victory is theirs. We coaches, sometimes, make substitutions that work, sometimes they don’t, but it’s the players who make it work or not, they’re the ones who accept or not the risk. This thing about coaches who take a lot of risks is all theory, because in practice, out there, they’re the ones who have to accept one style of play or another. And just as Nacional’s players fought until the end for their style of play, we stuck to ours until the end, and in my opinion, we deserved to win.

José Mourinho explained that this is the attitude he wants from now on: "Playing better, playing worse, having more talent, having less talent, having more players available or fewer players available, Benfica has to go until the end. Benfica today, if they lost the game, it would be a tremendous injustice. But, regardless of any kind of negative reaction that might come from the members, the fans, obviously from the press it would be another Lisbon earthquake, but they were Benfica... And they also took the risk, had the courage not to have a problem with, ‘ok, if we lose 2-0 we lose 2-0, but 1-0 and demoralized and passive, no.’ The team took that risk very well. I’m very happy, obviously, with the victory, because it’s points that feed us, but I also really like being happy with the way the team played. I’m happy. I think the players deserved this too. And Ajax away, and traveling only the next day, and having just one day to train, and then traveling again to Madeira, and having a tough game like this, on a pitch that’s tough for everyone, in a game that became even tougher because we didn’t score... Because there’s also something that seemed, or could have seemed, like the negativity that’s been following Benfica. Before Nacional’s goal, Barreiro missed an open goal. And Nacional, who hadn’t had a single shot on target, went there and scored. Normally, in the Benfica I found when I arrived, that would have been the final blow in the game. And for them, it wasn’t. Barreiro misses the goal, we make the mistake there, Nacional scores, there are 20 minutes left, which we knew wouldn’t be 20, we knew it would be 7 or 8, because of the way the game was being managed, that’s what would happen. But they kept going, and going, and going. And when we scored the equalizer, I thought the second goal would come, because the wave was already big," he concluded.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.