Roma coach Jose Mourinho again insulted the referee after the Europa League final

The famous Portuguese coach José Mourinho added to the list of high-profile scandals with his participation with another incident immediately after the end of the decisive match of the Europa League in Budapest, in which his Roma lost on penalties to Sevilla. Equating the refereeing of his first lost European Cup final to a “robbery” at a press conference, Mourinho insulted chief referee Anthony Taylor in the parking lot. However, attacks of this kind on the referee have already become familiar to Jose Mourinho, as well as punishments for them in the form of fines and disqualifications.

Among the main video hits associated with the final match of the Europa League, which took place on Wednesday in Budapest, along with game moments, was an episode filmed by an eyewitness after its completion in the VIP parking of the Puskas Arena stadium – it was published by many social networks and media resources. We are talking about the meeting on it of the famous coach of “Roma” Jose Mourinho and the chief referee of the meeting, Englishman Anthony Taylor.

In the video, Mourinho, catching up with Taylor, speaks to him in English and Italian in a raised tone, sometimes resorting to very offensive and obscene definitions.

For example, he uses the word “disgrace” (“shame”) with the addition “fucking” in relation to Anthony Taylor. The Guardian there is no doubt that this verbal attack by José Mourinho will be the subject of proceedings by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), whose regulations prohibit coaches from putting pressure on referees and insulting them, especially considering that shortly before entering the parking lot, Mourinho had already subjected him to a sharp, also beyond the framework of accepted norms criticized refereeing at a press conference immediately after the match.

He ended the seventh final of the second-ranking European Cup won by Sevilla in club history: in it, she has not yet allowed misfires in meetings crowning the tournament. The Spanish club won on penalties after a 1-1 draw in regular and extra time. For José Mourinho, who had previously won all five European Cup finals as a coach, he was the first loser in his biography.

Already in the course of the match, it was clear that the Portuguese was extremely annoyed by the refereeing. In the end, Anthony Taylor, who handed out a total of seven yellow cards to the players of the Rome team, showed them to three members of its coaching staff, including his head. José Mourinho poured out emotions and answering questions from journalists. Commenting on the work of the arbitrators, he used such terms as “scandal”, “robbery”, and said about Taylor that he judged “like a Spaniard”. According to José Mourinho, such a low level of referees in the European Cup final is “hard to accept”.

He also gave specific examples of manifestations of this level, drawing attention, for example, to the fact that Roma player Lorenzo Pellegrini deserved a warning from Taylor for falling in someone else’s penalty area without a foul, and Sevilla player Lucas Ocampos in a similar situation, despite viewing moment using VAR, has been forgiven. In addition, Mourinho insisted that Ocampos’ partner Eric Lamela, who scored a penalty in the post-match series, should be sent off for a second yellow card. Moreover, the coach clarified that he mentioned “small details”, without deciphering which ones are “big”, and also added that after the defeat in Budapest he feels “more pride” than after five finals won.

This incident added to a long list of high-profile scandals involving José Mourinho, of which there were no less than trophies in his coaching career. And a significant part of them are scandals related to refereeing.

The first notable happened during Mourinho’s tenure with Chelsea in 2005. In the opening round of the Champions League play-offs, the Londoners played Barcelona, ​​and after the first match, in which the Spanish club won, the Portuguese accused the referee Anders Frisk and opposing coach Frank Rijkaard of talking to each other at half-time, which, as Mourinho insisted, testified to the bias of the arbitrator. Frisk, after the resonant statements of the Chelsea mentor, began to receive messages with death threats. And Volker Roth, who was in charge of refereeing at UEFA, called Mourinho “an enemy of football.”

In 2010, the Italian Football Federation suspended José Mourinho for three matches for an extraordinary gesture during his Inter game against Sampdoria. With it, he depicted handcuffs. Football functionaries, as well as fans, had no doubt that the gesture was addressed to referee Paolo Tagliavento.

A few months later, already at the head of Real Madrid, Mourinho turned into the hero of a curious story. At the end of the penultimate match of the group stage of the Champions League, two players at once won against Ajax 4-0 and secured the first place in the group of the Spanish giant ahead of schedule – Sergio Ramos and Xabi Alonso – earned strange warnings received for tightening the time. UEFA conducted an investigation and settled on the version that the cards were earned on purpose, at the direction of the coach, so that the warnings accumulated in the group stage had time to “reset” before the play-offs. Mourinho was suspended for one match and fined £33,500.

At Roma, where he appeared in 2021, José Mourinho was penalized three times for “disrespecting” the referees.

In the first case, he got off with a fine of €10,000; in the second and third, a two-match disqualification was added to financial sanctions (for €20,000 and €10,000).

If the Budapest incident also results in a punishment for Jose Mourinho, it will most likely not be Roma who will suffer because of it. At the same heated press conference, the Portuguese made it clear that he was going to leave it in the summer, saying that he “couldn’t say where he would be next season.”

Alexey Dospekhov