"So if one day the result becomes 3-3, for me it doesn't change my mind, because it's football, it's normal. What is not normal is that we haven't been scoring enough goals playing such good football as we've been playing in the last few weeks"
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Mourinho is doing the classic managerial two-step: immunize himself against the chaos of a single result while quietly indicting the one thing he can’t coach into existence on command - finishing. The hypothetical 3-3 matters because it names the nightmare scenario (a lead squandered, narratives of “brittle” teams, defensive frailty) and then preemptively shrugs it off. That shrug is calculated. It tells players, press, and board: don’t confuse variance with failure.
The subtext is more pointed. By calling a goal drought “not normal,” he’s framing it as an aberration, not a symptom. That protects his tactical identity: “good football” is already happening, the process is sound, the coach is right. Any stagnation, then, is either bad luck, poor execution in the boxes, or personnel limitations - all problems that conveniently shift scrutiny away from the sideline and toward the squad, recruitment, or the fickleness of finishing.
It’s also Mourinho tailoring the message to modern football’s metrics-and-eyeball-test audience. He’s selling “performance” over “scoreline,” the language of expected goals without the acronym. Yet he keeps the tone grounded: football is messy; draws happen; don’t overreact. What he wants is control of the story. If results wobble, he’s already supplied the explanation: the team is playing well, only the goals are missing - and missing goals, unlike “bad football,” can turn overnight.
The subtext is more pointed. By calling a goal drought “not normal,” he’s framing it as an aberration, not a symptom. That protects his tactical identity: “good football” is already happening, the process is sound, the coach is right. Any stagnation, then, is either bad luck, poor execution in the boxes, or personnel limitations - all problems that conveniently shift scrutiny away from the sideline and toward the squad, recruitment, or the fickleness of finishing.
It’s also Mourinho tailoring the message to modern football’s metrics-and-eyeball-test audience. He’s selling “performance” over “scoreline,” the language of expected goals without the acronym. Yet he keeps the tone grounded: football is messy; draws happen; don’t overreact. What he wants is control of the story. If results wobble, he’s already supplied the explanation: the team is playing well, only the goals are missing - and missing goals, unlike “bad football,” can turn overnight.
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| Topic | Sports |
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