A LIGA OF ITS OWN
While football managers moaning about referees to deflect from their own teams’ shortcomings is nothing new, few do performative, wounded, righteous indignation with quite the same brooding intensity and petulance as José Mourinho. It’s been more than two decades since his moaning preceded a pile-on from angry fans whose threats forced the Swedish referee Anders Frisk into early retirement and in the interim, a steady stream of red cards, touchline bans and mournful post-match monologues have rendered his rap-sheet for badgering officialdom longer than a roll of Andrex toilet paper. On Sunday, Mourinho was at it again, following his 10-man Real Madrid side’s 2-1 defeat at the hands of their bitter city rivals Atlético. He arrived at his post-match presser armed with a sheet of A4 featuring screen-grabs of two tackles made by Atlético players that he felt should have resulted in red cards. “We can save ourselves the bother of the press conference because the story is right here,” he harrumphed, waving his piece of paper in front of assembled hacks before embarking on a paranoid tirade about Spanish match officials continuing to have it in for the put-upon, plucky underdogs of Real Madrid.
