Jose Mourinho looks back on a confrontation with another Dutch club prior to his meeting with AS Roma’s Conference League match with Vitesse. In May 2017, Mourinho’s Manchester United was far too strong for Ajax (0-2) in the Europa League final. Five years later, the Portuguese coach lashes out at the way in which the team from Amsterdam ‘whined’ about the loss.
The Ajax of Peter Bosz confidently traveled to Stockholm in 2017 for the final of the Europa League, but came home from a cold fair: Ajax did not know what to do with the many ball possession and found no openings in Mourinho’s strongly grouped Manchester United . Paul Pogba gave the English an early lead and shortly after the break Henrikh Mkhitaryan decided the game: 0-2.
Jose Mourinho impressed ????
“Ajax is a good example of why so many people love football” pic.twitter.com/ZscLPfOsWN
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) March 9, 2022
“I love good football and Ajax is a great example of why so many people love football, because they have been playing fantastic football for over fifty years,” Mourinho said positively. ESPN† “But in that final I didn’t like how they spoke before the game, and the way they whined after the game. In that final it was still 0-0 after ten minutes, but I already knew it was done. Sometimes you have to be pragmatic, especially in finals like then with Manchester United,” he explains his defensive tactics at the time. On Thursday he and AS Roma, his current team, will visit GelreDome for the eighth final of the Conference League against Vitesse.
Mourinho does not make it clear who was ‘nagging’ in his eyes. Davy Klaassen, in the final base player at Ajax, said after the game, for example: “They wait and shoot every ball forward and make two lucky shots, that’s the difference today. Then United went further and further back. We tried to play through it, but the opponent knew exactly what we were going to do, so if you don’t have a great day it will be difficult.”
It was Bosz’s last match at Ajax, as it turned out later. The current coach of Olympique Lyon mainly sought the cause of that defeat with his own team. “You play a final to win,” Bosz said five years ago. “But in order to win finals, you first have to play finals. We have come a long way with a young team, but tonight I did not see the Ajax that I am used to. You must not find out against such a team and that already happened quickly. Our midfielders were covered short, they let Davinson Sánchez always dribble in. And they themselves play everything for a long time on Marouane Fellaini. There were hardly any chances, on both sides.”