Jose Mourinho appears to have taken a dig at Mauricio Pochettino and Jurgen Klopp by questioning the approach of younger managers who seemingly favour style over substance.
Mourinho, speaking a month after he was sacked by Manchester United, defended his style of play after criticism has been levelled at him for his supposedly defensive methods and couldn’t resist a barb at the Tottenham and Liverpool bosses.
United were not getting results or winning any awards for entertainment in the last few months of Mourinho’s reign at Old Trafford, but he insists he still deserves to be ranked alongside those managers considered serial winners.
And, in doing so, Mourinho appears to have taken a swipe at both Pochettino and Klopp, who have been praised for bringing great football to the Premier League – but are still without an English trophy between them.
“It’s very easy to ‘play well’ and not win,” the Portuguese said while working for beIN SPORTS.
“It’s very easy to be behind a certain idea of a certain football, without results. But the people who win consistently have a different idea about that.
“If you speak about Guardiola, if you speak about Ancelotti, about the ones where obviously I belong, who have a career of victories over a long period, where are the young ones with a real impact in terms of results? Where are they?”
Mourinho’s entire two-and-a-half year spell as United manager was a large disappointment, with the Red Devils expected to achieve big things when the Portuguese was hired.
However, the former Chelsea boss won only two trophies – the Carabao Cup and Europa League in 2016/17 – and never managed to guide United to that long-awaited next Premier League title.
Nonetheless, Mourinho actually thinks the greatest achievement of his career came while in charge of the Red Devils – guiding them to a second place finish in last season’s league campaign.
He continued: “Sometimes we comment on what we see, but we don’t know what is behind the scenes and influences what we see. I think that is a fundamental thing.
“If I tell you for example that I consider one of the best jobs of my career (was) to finish second with Manchester United in the Premier League, you say ‘This guy is crazy – he won 25 titles’.
“But I keep saying this because people don’t know what is going on behind the scenes.
“Sometimes we, on this side of the camera, analyse things with a different perspective.”