JOSE MOURINHO slammed the ‘clueless’ bigwigs at the FA who banned Eric Dier for four matches. But the Tottenham boss insists the yob who abused his player will be welcomed back at the stadium. Spurs defender Dier was given a four-match ban and fined £40,000 for climbing into the stands to confront a fan who […]
JOSE MOURINHO slammed the ‘clueless’ bigwigs at the FA who banned Eric Dier for four matches.
But the Tottenham boss insists the yob who abused his player will be welcomed back at the stadium.
Spurs defender Dier was given a four-match ban and fined £40,000 for climbing into the stands to confront a fan who had hurled abuse at him and his family after the FA Cup shootout defeat to Norwich on March 4.
The FA’s independent panel punished England defender Dier for “threatening” behaviour – despite being told the fan called him a “w*****” and a “f***ing c***”.
Mourinho branded FA people “powerful people who do not have a clue”.
And he risked gettimg himself into trouble, insisting they “do not belong to the tribe” of football.
The severity of the punishment has raised the issue of whether players are protected enough from fans.
But Mourinho believes the stars need shielding even more from those who run the game.
The Special One, no stranger to an FA ban or a fine, said: “For me the problem is not the stadiums. We have to be in love with the game.
“And to be in love with the game we have to be in love with the good things and bad things.
“But players are human. We coaches, we have feelings and we don’t like to lose. Managers more than players because every defeat puts a manager in a very difficult situation. It’s a difficult job.
“But we love it. My feeling is that in the majority of the cases, football is not protected by the people who are powerful and do not belong to this world.
“That’s simply my feeling. Powerful people — who don’t belong to the tribe. And they don’t have the feelings.
“They don’t have the know-how. And it’s very, very difficult to lead something when you don’t have a clue about the world that you are leading.”
The real shame for Dier, 26, is he was just beginning to establish himself in his favourite centre-back role having played every second of Tottenham’s four matches since the season restarted.
It has led to the former Sporting Lisbon trainee being touted as a future Bobby Moore.
But Mourinho said: “In this moment to speak about Eric Dier always comes to my mind what not what he can be, not what he is.
“What comes to my mind is what he isn’t, and what he isn’t is, he is not available to play the next four matches.
“He is not available to try to help the team to reach objectives that we still fight for and we are going to fight until the end.
“We can have a better conversation next season when he is ready to play and hopefully everything is back to normality, playing the football we love.
“So I don’t want to speak about Eric Dier now because in the end I’m going to open my heart and that’s something that I do not want to do.
“All I will say is, he is a top-level boy. He’s one of these guys who looks older than he is, with the way he thinks.
“You can see the example that he is at the social level, you can see his profile even socially without being married with kids, he looks really a family stable guy — very easy to communicate with and it’s not just because he speaks perfect Portuguese!
“It’s not because of that our communication is so, so easy.
“He’s really a young guy with a lot of potential, part of his football qualities, a young guy with a lot of potential.
“So to choose somebody to be the face of this decision now, I think is the wrong guy.”
Tottenham will also be without hamstring victim Dele Alli for tonight’s clash at Bournemouth.
Mourinho’s call for his Spurs stars to be more open and critical of each other resulted in skipper Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-min squaring up to each other on the pitch during their 1-0 win at home to Everton on Monday.
Mourinho said: “A team has to be more than the sum of the individuals.
“So they need to interact, they need to communicate, they need to share ideas, they need to discuss what happened in the game.
“They need to discuss what can happen in the next one.
“They need to motivate each other and I stimulate this. I believe there are managers who don’t want the players to do that.
“There are managers who would be really, really upset with any discussion that can happen in the dressing room.
“I am upset with silence. I hate silence in a dressing room. I hate independent monologue. I hate that.
“I don’t like monologues and I don’t want to be in front of players speaking for 20 minutes without any kind of interaction.
“So it’s something I stimulate, my way of being, my way of leading and my team the other day showed me they can improve at this level.”
SPURS (likely): Lloris, Aurier, Alderweireld, Sanchez, Davies, Winks, Sissoko, Son, Lo Celso, Moura, Kane.
