Portuguese coach José Mourinho’s dream of leading Fenerbahce Istanbul in the top-flight of the prestigious Champions League was dashed on Tuesday night. His new employer failed in the home rematch of the 3rd preliminary round and was eliminated with the French club OSC Lille.
After the match, the sixty-one-year-old coach criticized the verdicts of referee José María Sanchéz Martínez from Spain in his own way. “I prefer not to say anything because it would have consequences,” said the native Portuguese.
Although the Istanbul big club was able to erase the goal deficit from the first match in the home rematch, at the end of extra time, the referee ordered a penalty kick for the guests from the north of France.
Canadian representative Jonathan David converted and decided his team’s progress to the next part of the competition, in which they will meet Slavia Prague.
“It’s better not to talk about the penalty. When I look at other incidents that happened to me recently, I prefer to remain silent. Why it was a penalty, only the referee knows.
I am proud of my team, the result is the work of the referee. I’m not even going to talk about the fact that the match could have developed differently if he punished the opposing players with yellow cards in the beginning,” added the native of Setúbal, who won the Champions League in the 2009/2010 season as coach of the Italian Inter Milan.
Fenerbahce’s fifteen-year wait to break into the main phase of the Champions League thus continues. The club from the Asian side of the capital of Turkey will thus again play “only” the European League.
“We are still only at the beginning of the season. If we hang our heads, it will be bad. We can’t spoil the whole year today, we’d be stupid,” added Mourinho, who signed a two-year contract with the club in the summer with an annual salary of 10.5 million euros.
The goal of the new coach is to win the domestic league title, which Fenerbahce players have not won since 2014.
Last year, they finished 2nd in the Süper Lig, despite collecting up to 99 points and recording only one loss. Even more dominant was their old rival Galatasaray, who won 102 points last year.
Mourinho has been out of work in recent months after leaving Italian club AS Roma in January. He has not worked outside the elite five European leagues since 2004, when after a successful training at FC Porto, he left for the English club FC Chelsea.
Since then, in addition to Spanish Real Madrid or Italian Inter Milan, he has also trained at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Mourinho met several former wards at the Istanbul club. The yellow-blue jersey is worn by Edin Ďžeko and Fred, with whom he worked in AS Rím, respectively. at Manchester United. Stars such as Michy Batshuayi, Dušan Tadič or Dominik Livakovič are part of the squad.
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
