Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho has claimed he is still “very young for a football manager” and insists he is getting better with experience.
At 57, Mourinho is fifth-oldest manager in the Premier League, having begun his top-level coaching career with Porto in 2002.
The Portuguese is one of the game’s most decorated coaches but he was sacked from his two previous jobs with Chelsea and Manchester United, and has faced repeated accusations that his football and management style are outdated.
Mourinho, however, says he loves coaching more than ever and believes he is less impulsive and more in control than he was as a younger manager.
As an example, he cited Spurs’ 1-1 draw against Crystal Palace on the final day of last season when they needed to better Wolves’ result at Chelsea to guarantee a spot in the Europa League.
“People think I’m very old because I have been at this level since 2002,” Mourinho said in an interview to promote Amazon Prime’s upcoming documentary on the club’s season, All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur.
“I’m not very old. I’m very young for a football manager. It’s the kind of job where you become better with experience and not worse.
“I’ll give you an example: The last match against Crystal Palace. Five, six, seven years ago, I would have managed it in a different way.”
“When Crystal Palace scored, that was the only moment I wanted to know the score of the Wolves game. My first feeling was at 1-1, we have to win, we need to win. I’m going to play Dele and I’m going to replace Serge Aurier and go for it. I know that Wolves are losing 2-0. I understand the way Chelsea normally plays and how important the game was.”
“In the middle of all that pressure, I was calm, I had time to think, to process my ideas. I made different changes. I am not impulsive anymore. I am more in control of my emotions. I think better, decide better. I think a coach, the older you get, there’s an accumulation of experience.”
“You are not a player. You don’t need your body to work in the same way. You need your brain to be better. I don’t need to sprint. I don’t need to jump. I don’t need to run for 90 minutes. I need to think.”
“So a coach gets better and better until the motivation is gone. I think for a coach, it’s the coach that has to decide when he doesn’t like it anymore. In my case, I love it more and more and more. I like the challenge.”
“The history is there. First of all, I want to enjoy, and secondly I want to win more. I want to fight. I want to play. I want to coach every day. I want to wake up in the morning and have that happiness of going to the training session. That’s it.”
Mourinho is not oblivious to his critics and in one scene during Amazon’s documentary he is shown telling a television commentary who questions his appointment at Spurs to “f*** off”.
Asked how he remained motivated during bad spells, Mourinho continued the theme, saying he was more level-headed with experience.
“That’s how I stay more motivated, because [bad results are] something that you don’t accept,” he said.
“That is something I am very clear about. Again, the more experienced you are, the better you deal with it. I’m not over the moon when things are going very well and I’m not in hell when things are going bad.
“I always keep a balance and I think it’s very important for the players to feel that balance. It’s very important. That is something that experience brought me. If you win, keep your feet on the ground. You are not the king of the universe. When you lose, you are not a disaster, so stay calm and in emotional control.
“The difficult moments are the most challenging ones that bring out the best of you. People with less experience need a rope to survive. They need to look at you and they need to feel that. It’s also like that with the team.
They need a captain. They need two captains. They need the most experienced guy. They need a guy with a different mentality. We need this mentality.”
(London Evening Standard)
