Jose Mourinho has apparently adopted an odd stance, saying he is no position to analyse Marcelo Bielsa despite four meetings in La Liga but admits the Leeds United boss must be clearly \u201ca very good coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mourinho and Bielsa will lock horns again a fifth time \u2013 but their first ever in a first Premier League clash \u2013 in Saturday\u2019s contest in north London as Mourinho\u2019s Tottenham Hotspur welcome Bielsa\u2019s Leeds for a 12.30pm kick-off.<\/p>\n
The two managers definitely have history with Bielsa and Mourinho having encountered each other four times during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 La Liga campaigns when Mourinho\u2019s Real Madrid played Bielsa\u2019s Athletic Bilbao with Mourinho\u2019s side winning all four meetings but the Spurs boss categorically said those contests were Real against Bilbao and not Bielsa against Mourinho.<\/p>\n
Bielsa\u2019s distinguished career and captivating style of play have led to the likes of Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino becoming \u2018disciples\u2019 of United\u2019s head coach.<\/p>\n
However, speaking at his pre-match press conference as quoted by football.london, Mourinho said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m only a disciple of my father and I don\u2019t like that situation in football.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven younger coaches, even people that worked with me before, I don\u2019t like that: \u2018Oh, they are a disciple of Jose\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is an individual with their own ideas, can be influenced by one or another, but in the end what matters is the individual.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think to speak about Mr Bielsa is for people who know him well. I don\u2019t know him well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was Athletic Bilbao coach in one of the seasons I was in Real Madrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow is the first time we\u2019re in the Premier League at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor sure, he has to be a very good coach but I\u2019m not the person to analyse him because I don\u2019t know him even personally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just shook hands a couple of times and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it was put to him on how to approach contests against Bielsa considering his record of four wins out of four, Mourinho said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t play against Mr Bielsa, never.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy club played against his club or my team played against his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like that individual situation because that doesn\u2019t exist, for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe analyse our opponents, we did that in relation to Fulham. We did that in relation to Leeds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know where they are very strong and of course we have to try not to let them export their strengths and at the same time we have to try to play our game.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t like that kind of approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mourinho playing mind games again?<\/p>\n
Credit: Football Tribe Malaysia<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jose Mourinho has apparently adopted an odd stance, saying he is no position to analyse Marcelo Bielsa despite four meetings in La Liga but admits the Leeds United boss must be clearly \u201ca very good coach.\u201d Mourinho and Bielsa will lock horns again a fifth time \u2013 but their first ever in a first Premier League clash \u2013 in Saturday\u2019s contest in north London as Mourinho\u2019s Tottenham Hotspur welcome Bielsa\u2019s Leeds for a 12.30pm kick-off. The two managers definitely have history with Bielsa and Mourinho having encountered each other four times during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 La Liga campaigns when Mourinho\u2019s Real Madrid played Bielsa\u2019s Athletic Bilbao with Mourinho\u2019s side … Continue reading “\u2018I don\u2019t know him\u2019 \u2013 Jose Mourinho plays down past \u2018battles\u2019 with Marcelo Bielsa”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":24312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1639,1640],"tags":[461,1447,2294,95,232],"class_list":["post-25155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-european-leagues","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-leeds-united","tag-marcelo-bielsa","tag-slider","tag-tottenham-hotspur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25156,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25155\/revisions\/25156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}