Portugues tactician and Tottenham Hotspurs gaffer, Jose Mourinho has slammed the decision to schedule the North London based outfit’s clash against relegation escaping Aston Villa on Sunday and termed it as “lack of care”.
Jose Mourinho’s Tottenham Hotspurs will host the German side, RB Leipzig, in their Champions League knockout fixture of last-16 first leg on Wednesday which is just three days after making the trip to Villa Park. The gaffer was very unhappy and critical about the scheduling and called it as unfair for Tottenham who sit sixth in the Premier League table.
Talking to the press, Jose Mourinho said:
“I’ll give you a very simple example. [Friday], Leicester v Wolves. Why? Do they have a Champions League game next week? No. Not Leicester, not Wolves. Wolves has a Europa League game on the Thursday,”
“We are the team in England that plays a Champions League game on Wednesday. We don’t play Friday, we don’t play Saturday, we play Sunday. I don’t think it is normal.”
Jose Mourinho also believed that this kind of scheduling can harm Tottenham’s progress in the Champions League. Tottenham Hotspurs were runner ups in the Champions League 2018-19. He said:
“You can tell me it was because your game was chosen to be on TV on Sunday at 12pm and I ask you, in the other five matches of the Premier League this weekend, there is not another one that could be played on Sunday at 2.30pm? It’s as simple as that,”
“That’s the only thing I say – there is no care. They just chose what they want and they don’t think how they can hurt an English team.
“And in this case we are going to be hurt because we are going to play on Sunday 2pm when we could perfectly play on Saturday or [Friday night].”
“It’s a very difficult week for us, and then, of course, we would like to play Chelsea on the Sunday after Leipzig, but no [we play] on Saturday,”
“And we would like to play Saturday 5pm – but instead we play 12 o’clock. So it’s a really hard week for us – Sunday Villa, Wednesday Leipzig, Saturday Chelsea.”
"It’s a really hard week for us – Sunday Villa, Wednesday Leipzig, Saturday Chelsea – but let’s go match after match."
Jose on a busy week ahead.#THFC ⚪️ #COYS
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) February 15, 2020
