Jose Mourinho is on the receiving of several negative articles in the European media on Tuesday.
Marca say the manager is currently in his ‘darkest hour’, and De Telegraaf suggest he’s given the impression Steven Bergwijn is out for the season, without knowing the results of tests, to make Tottenham’s injury crisis seem as bad as possible.
In France, L’Equipe obviously go for the Tanguy Ndombele angle.
Firstly, they explain Mourinho is receiving twice the salary Mauricio Pochettino did, and is far from being twice the manager. Tottenham are presented as reverting to ‘long and direct’ football, and they’ve ‘lost all identity’ without managing to get a balance in defence either.
The French newspaper say Mourinho now has to prove the Champions League isn’t ‘too big for him’, given he hasn’t progressed to the quarterfinals since 2014.
However, Jose is still Jose, and that leads L’Equipe to say he’s been using usual diversion tactics to take scrutiny away from Tottenham’s poor results.
They believe Mourinho couldn’t have held the Spurs collective to blame for the draw and poor performance against Burnley, because that would have ‘made him responsible’.
As they see it, he instead took aim at Ndombele and ‘spared’ himself.
They don’t absolve the midfielder of blame, but do stick up for him, stating: ‘In fact, everyone knows that Ndombele has staggering defensive absences for a player of this level. But at Burnley, at halftime, he was Spurs’ second in number of balls played, and second in duels won. And facing Leipzig, it was when he entered that something happened.’
To make their point that it’s a Tottenham issue rather than an Ndombele one, they add: ‘Giovani Lo Celso, for example, has been Tottenham’s best field player by far enough, but his record is terrible: no goals, no assists in the Premier League.’
Steven Bergwijn | From Netherlands: Injury ‘inevitable’, known ‘weeks ago’.
De Telegraaf believe Mourinho presented worst case scenario, without knowing anything with certainty, because he wanted to make #thfc injury crisis seem as bad as possible. https://t.co/uwX8wg1eQv #coys
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness) March 10, 2020
