Mourinho cries delicious salty tears over Son sending off for kicking out at Rüdiger

José Mourinho, (ex-)master media manipulator, was up to his usual post-match antics yesterday, chalking up Chelsea’s 2-0 win against his Spurs to anything but Chelsea themselves.

Chelsea’s tactics weren’t good, they were just borrowed from Conte, who left them behind in a “break glass in emergency” case at Cobham. Chelsea’s execution wasn’t great, Spurs just made individual mistakes. He definitely wasn’t outcoached and outtacticed, the forces of football and refereeing and the stars above just conspired against him. And so on.

It’s a familiar play full of tired rhetorics and surely everyone’s clocked on to him by now. In fact, most were already clocked on to him in during his second go-around at Chelsea, which was now, somewhat unbelievably, five years ago!

That said, it was hard not to chuckle — and thus pay attention to Mourinho — as he cried delicious salty tears over the VAR-awarded red card for Son Heung-min, after he kicked out at Antonio Rüdiger.

“Rüdiger is for sure is having scans in the hospital on broken ribs because it was a really violent situation. In some countries, like mine, for example with our culture we used to say clever player but in this country, and one of the reasons I fell in love with this country in 2004 it because we don’t call them clever, we call them other things that I refuse to call.”

-José Mourinho; source: Football.London

If we somehow can ignore the rest of the situation, that’s actually pretty funny.

Of course, it’s misguided entirely. Sure, Rüdiger may have embellished — as all players do, otherwise it’s rare to get a call (perhaps in an ideal future, VAR will allow us to do away with having to call attention to fouls in order to get fouls called) — and sure, the old-school types will think it’s a “harsh” call (game’s so gone!), but in these modern times, such conduct is not allowed. Calling it “violent conduct” has long been a misnomer. The intent is punished as much as the action, and rightly so.

If Son doesn’t kick out, he doesn’t get sent off. Pretty simple, no?