Liverpool head coach Arne Slot once laughed at Jose Mourinho when the fuming former Chelsea boss didn’t like his comments comparing him to Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola.
Slot was asked about Mourinho ahead of facing him but made clear that he wanted his team to play a different style. And Mourinho didn’t like what he had to say, as De Telegraaf journalist Marcel van der Kraan has explained.
“I was there on a European Cup night and he’d really upset Mourinho,” he said. “He told the Italian press when they asked him ‘How many times have you studied Mourinho’s team here in Italy?’.
“He said ‘Well, I tend not to look at Mourinho’s team because I get nothing out of it’. [He said], ‘I’d rather watch Pep Guardiola’s team. That is the style I follow, that is the way I want to play football’.
“Obviously Mourinho had picked that up and after the match — which went to extra time and only by a minute or so — Mourinho managed to go through and avoid the knockout. Mourinho stormed in the dressing room towards Slot and had a real go at him.”
“Shouting, swearing and ‘Go watch Guardiola if you like, you’ll never win anything’, and Slot wasn’t even bothered. He just laughed at him,” Van der Krann, speaking on the BBC’s Football Daily Podcast, continued.
(Image: Ahmad Mora/Getty Images)
“I could see him thinking, ‘Well, you can shout what you want, and yeah maybe fair enough you won some trophies, but I play football the way I want and my next club will play exactly the same as I’m playing here’.”
Slot, of course, has been proven right. He won the league title with Feyenoord and has now become a Premier League champion with Liverpool.
The game in question was a Europa League quarter-final tie in 2023. Having won the first leg 1-0, Feyenoord took a 2-1 aggregate lead over Mourinho’s AS Roma into the closing stages.
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Paulo Dybala canceled out Igor Paixao’s strike on the night to force extra time. But Roma then scored twice in extra time to seal a 4-2 aggregate win.
Mourinho’s assistant, Salvatore Foti, was shown a red card during the game, and Feyenoord striker Santiago Gimenez was also dismissed at the end of the game. Roma ended up losing the final of the competition to Sevilla in Budapest.
Mourinho then fumed at the referee, Anthony Taylor, who was later forced to flee flocks of angry fans at the airport who confronted him and his family in unpleasant scenes that the PGMOL condemned.
Liverpool.com says: Slot has done a superb job at Liverpool. He is a very good coach, but he has a very good temperament too… in contrast to Mourinho.
