As a grumpy man, Jose Mourinho knows a lot about attitude
Attitude is the sort of thing that can be enormously positive, such as giving yourself the moniker of “the Special One” before delivering Chelsea their first title in decades, or it can be negative, such as, hmmm, I dunno, poking someone in the eye.
Either way, Mourinho knows what he’s talking about when it comes to attitude, regardless what that particular attitude is.
After Manchester United’s 1-1 home draw with newly-promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday afternoon, Mourinho revealed that he had seen something in the attitude of his players that he didn’t much like.
Praising Wolves’ players for performing like it was a “World Cup final”, the Portuguese coach questioned why his own squad were not playing with a similar sense of urgency.
“That is the attitude I like my teams to have in every match. We didn’t have that. This is something you learn when you are a kid in the academy. You don’t need experiences at the highest level to learn that. It is a basic law of football. I can’t explain the difference of attitude because I never had a difference of attitude. For me it is difficult to explain that,” said Mourinho.
“I could say we were tired, Champions League, awful pitch [at Young Boys of Bern] – the body suffers the different impact on an artificial rather than actual grass – not coming home after the match. I could go in this direction but Alexis Sánchez and Jesse Lingard didn’t play. Fellaini played 20, 25 minutes, Fred played 60 minutes, Valencia also didn’t play.”
Despite taking the lead, United were consistently under pressure at Old Trafford against Nuno Espirito Santo’s side, and faced a barrage of shots as the game wound down. They will have been disappointed not to win the game on a day when Sir Alex Ferguson returned to Old Trafford for the first time since recovering from a brain haemorrhage.
