Mourinho reacts to Cup defeat at Chelsea
Jose Mourinho is "proud" of his Manchester United players for their performance in Monday's Emirates FA Cup defeat at Chelsea, having played with 10 men for much of the quarter-final.
Ander Herrera was sent off on 35 minutes after being shown a yellow card for the second time but the Reds performed admirably in spite of the numerical disadvantage, both before and after Chelsea midfielder N'Golo Kante scored the only goal of the game in the second half.Here are the main points from Mourinho's post-match interviews with BBC Sport and MUTV...
PROUD OF THE PLAYERS
"I want to say that I'm really proud of my players, I'm really proud of Manchester United fans. We have a very important match on Thursday and I want to rest a little bit to try to prepare the team as best we can for the Thursday match and that's the most important thing."
REACTION TO THE RED CARD
"Everybody can analyse in different perspectives, everyone can do it in a different way, but I think we all watched the match until the red card. After the red card, then we can compare the decisions of these two yellow cards, in this case the second yellow card with ones that were not given. But I don't want to go in that direction. This season Mr Michael Oliver is a referee with fantastic potential, but with Manchester United we were a bit unlucky. In four matches, [we have had] three penalties and one red card in such an early moment of the game. But again I cannot change that, but I can try to interfere in the Thursday match [against Rostov] which is the match that is coming and now we have to rest."
TACTICS WERE WORKING AT 11 V 11
"The game was completely under control [before the red card]. They couldn’t find what is their game. I keep saying their game is counter attack and when a team closes the spaces in between the lines and closes the full-backs, they have no qualities to be dangerous. In the second half with 10 men, we started with two up and they had a very important role in our attacking football, but also defending and building up from the three central defenders. Azpilicueta started coming up and creating situations where they brought us back, but even so we were brilliant in the way we played. We had two very good chances, the Marcus one was the biggest, and we were there. But I cannot be more proud of the players and the fans."
JUDAS IS NUMBER ONE
In the post-match press conference, Jose was asked about a section of Chelsea supporters who called him Judas during the game and the manager gave this amusing response: "They can call what they want, I am professional and I defend my club. Until the moment they have a manager that wins four Premier Leagues for them, I am the number one. When they have somebody that wins four Premier Leagues, I become number two. But until this moment Judas is number one."
REASON FOR NOT SHAKING CONTE'S HAND
“If I see him here I will shake it," the manager said when asked about not shaking the Chelsea manager's hand at full-time. "I didn’t because I thought my players deserved my action immediately and I our supporters also deserved our thanks to them, so it was that. I can promise you that if I see him out there I will shake his hand. I have nothing to speak with him at all, but to shake his hand, for sure I will do that.”
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