One man bigger than Man Utd? Mourinho ego game is out of control

The Portuguese continue to big up his own record despite United's woes, and it is winning him no fans around Old Trafford
It looked like a crazed wrestler going to town on ringside paraphernalia: the big swinging boot and then the body slam of the bottle carrier, the rage in the eyes.

In fact, this was just Jose Mourinho’s latest way of celebrating a last-minute winner, or rather his latest way to court the attention.

The Manchester United manager stopped just short of administering a big leg-drop and tearing off his shirt after Marouane Fellaini’s injury-time winner against Young Boys on Tuesday, although he did continue the theme afterward by delivering yet another bout of WWE-standard trash talk.

First of all, let me send a message to my lovers and say I play Champions League 14 years and qualify 14 times,” he said in his post-match press conference. “And the years where I didn’t play Champions League, I won the Europa League twice. So in 16 years, 14 times I qualify. Just a little curiosity for my ‘lovers’ and lovers of the stats.”

Win, lose or draw, Mourinho always has an answer for everything. There is forever a slant he can find which absolves him of the blame. His post-match interviews and press conferences see him do everything but grab the microphone from his unwitting interlocutors and bellow a message to his enemies right down the barrel of the camera.

And nobody is safe, least of all Manchester United and its players. He is forever dissing his playing staff in public, with the recent dig at many of his younger stars for doing nothing more than acting like young men of the 21st century being the latest barb. That coming after two years of prepared monologues aimed at everyone from Luke Shaw and Chris Smalling to Ed Woodward and even United as a club – think “I’ve sat in this chair twice before, with Porto - Man Utd out, with Real Madrid - Man Utd out, so this is nothing new for this club.”