Tottenham Hotspur have become the third English football club in the last six years to sack Jose Mourinho.
After a particularly dismal run of form in an altogether inconsistent season, Spurs have followed in the footsteps of Chelsea and Manchester United in parting ways with the Portuguese maestro.
With no win in their last three games and just the one in the last six, the last month of football has seen Spurs free-fall to seventh, and out of the race for the top four in the Premier League while their Europa League ambitions were also left in tatters after a disastrous and perhaps fateful 3-0 loss to Dinamo Zagreb back in March.
It looked like Mourinho might get the opportunity to salvage his lost season, with a League cup final coming up this weekend but first-team coach Ryan Mason will now be entrusted with ending Spurs’ long trophy drought.
“Jose and his coaching staff have been with us through some of our most challenging times as a Club,” read Chairman Daniel Levy’s relatively short statement.
“Jose is a true professional who showed enormous resilience during the pandemic,” Levy continued. “On a personal level I have enjoyed working with him and regret that things have not worked out as we both had envisaged. He will always be welcome here and we should like to thank him and his coaching staff for their contribution.”
Coming the day after the led balloon dropped, and the ‘European Super League’ was announced, don’t be surprised if the special one sees it as an opportunity to become the hero of the hour. Don’t even be angry. Football needs a hero right now and in reality, this is an open goal for the man who sometimes play the pantomime villain, but always plays the cunning opportunist.
That’s what we love him for.
In 2018, he dismissed the Super League with the contempt of a cyclist who’d just had their bike robbed. “I’m not interested in that,” he sniped with such spite that you knew it was going to stand to him one day.
Today is that day. Now is his time.
If Jose Mourinho doesn't use this to go out in the blaze of all blazes of glory, then we will eat our hats.
"I'm not interested in that."
Football needs a hero. Come on Jose.pic.twitter.com/zbYzJ5bySG
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 19, 2021
His race with Tottenham Hotspur and perhaps with English football, is run now but this show isn’t over, it’s only getting started. It’s not about Spurs, not about the Premier League anymore, this is about football and the saviour it desperately needs. Mourinho’s first interview as a free-man will be special.
