Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 21:45• Mart van Mourik • Last update: 21:48

Jose Mourinho appeared visibly irritated in front of the camera on Thursday evening. In the Conference League match against Bodö/Glimt, AS Roma went down 6-1, which led to a lot of frustration. It was the biggest defeat ever for a team led by the Portuguese elector.

Mourinho started the meeting in Norway with an almost complete team of substitutes. Rick Karsdrop, among others, was not in the match selection, while Tammy Abraham, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Lorenzo Pellegrini and Bryan Cristante only made their appearance in the second act. “It is my responsibility that I have decided to start with this team,” the coach said in front of the camera of the defeat after the defeat. Sky Italy.

“I let them play who normally don’t make many minutes. Given the limited selection width and the large number of matches we have to play, I had to give a lot of base players a rest. In addition, I wanted to protect my basic strength from injuries, because we played on artificial grass and in bad weather conditions. We lost to a team that had more quality in the starting line-up than us,” Mourinho said.

The coach is regularly asked at press conferences why he often sends the same starting eleven into the field. Also last Sunday, Mourinho was asked a similar question after the 1-0 defeat to Juventus, and he also fell an embarrassing silence. The Portuguese publicly dropped three young defenders from his group of players and apparently tried to send a signal to the board to strengthen the selection. Even now Mourinho does not protect his group of players.

“If you could always play with the same players, I would. It’s a big risk,” says the choice lord. “There is a significant difference between the qualities of our starting players and the reserves. I knew the limitations of some players and it’s nothing new, but I expected a better response. Now you won’t ask me again why we always play with the same names. I have already spoken to the players in the dressing room and I have been honest. It was a team with many limitations. The twelve or thirteen players are one thing, but the rest… We will now have to carry the weight of this historic defeat on our shoulders,” concludes Mourinho.