Jose Mourinho’s sensational eight-minute refereeing rant has seen him labelled a ‘bully’ by Simon Jordan.
The former Chelsea and Real Madrid manager went on an outrageous tirade after a 3-2 win for Fenerbahce over Trabzonspor, calling the referee a ‘little boy’ and saying ‘we don’t want him again’.
He added that he had been warned about corruption but it’s worse than he was told and said Fenerbahce are ‘playing against a system’.
The comments quickly made headline news across the globe, and former Crystal Palace owner Jordan thinks that’s exactly what Mourinho wanted to achieve.
“Mourinho’s no longer the elite manager he was, otherwise he wouldn’t be at Fenerbahce,” the talkSPORT host explained.
“The observations he’s made, I’m not an expert on Turkish officialdom, but I watched the moments he was ranting and raving about and they weren’t that bad, quite frankly.
“So I don’t know why he’s going off, maybe it’s because he’s at Fenerbahce and no one is talking about him, no one’s interested in him anymore so he creates some noise about himself.
“He doesn’t just take it out on VAR, he takes it out on the whole of Turkish football and Fenerbahce included, and I think it was a bit much, I’m a big admirer of his, I think he’s one of the most illuminating and charismatic people in the last 20 years of football, but I think he’s at the end of the road as far as elite management is concerned.”
Mourinho has long attacked referees during his career which included stints at Inter Milan, Manchester United and Tottenham.
However, evidence is compiling that he’s reached a new extreme, with British official Anthony Taylor and his family attacked at an airport by Roma fans after their Europa League final defeat to Sevilla at the end of the 2022/23 season.
The 61-year-old blamed Taylor for the defeat, and was later filmed in a car park shouting “it’s a f***ing disgrace man,” at the official, who then had objects thrown at himself, his wife and children at Budapest airport.
Referring to that incident, Jordan continued: “He’s a bully, he bullied Anthony Taylor 18 months ago, and okay, the media didn’t have to report it the way they did and create the storm that followed after his behaviour, but Mourinho shouldn’t have behaved the way he did.
Mourinho went at Taylor again in a car park[/caption]
“Now he’s picking on another referee, and it’s easy to pick on referees because they don’t have a right of reply.
“If that referee came out and said ‘you’re a small childlike individual’, what would Mourinho do if that was said about him? He’d go nuclear.
“I don’t like it. I think Mourinho should operate at a higher level, he should operate better.
“Maybe he’s frustrated at his lot. We’re talking about a career that’s deteriorating, he’s managed Madrid, Inter, United, you’re not winning if you’re at Fenerbahce.”
