A big Monday morning news dump, as Tottenham Hotspur fires manager Jose Mourinho and members of his staff amidst a disappointing season.
Tottenham broke said news themselves via Twitter and an online statement:
The Club can today announce that Jose Mourinho and his coaching staff Joao Sacramento, Nuno Santos, Carlos Lalin and Giovanni Cerra have been relieved of their duties.#THFC ⚪️ #COYS
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) April 19, 2021
From their statement:
Chairman, Daniel Levy, said: “Jose and his coaching staff have been with us through some of our most challenging times as a Club. Jose is a true professional who showed enormous resilience during the pandemic. On a personal level I have enjoyed working with him and regret that things have not worked out as we both had envisaged. He will always be welcome here and we should like to thank him and his coaching staff for their contribution.”
Ryan Mason will take First Team training today and a further update will follow in due course.
From a performance standpoint, the move is certainly defensible. Mournhio is one of the most accomplished managers alive, but his time at Tottenham has involved a much lower ceiling of success than his prior winning stints at Chelsea, Real Madrid, and Inter Milan.
Instead, it’s been more like his Manchester United tenure, with results just not coming with the expediency clubs expect for the price of both paying and dealing with Mourinho’s various personality tics and traits.
Last season he led Tottenham to a 6th place finish in the league. As the table stands today, Mourinho is has Spurs in 7th.
Could they still climb to a Champions League place? Possibly! But the move feels like a tactical choice to bury the transition considering the various and fluid reports from the weekend surrounding the creation of the European Super League, of which Tottenham is reportedly a part.
There’s another possibility for the timing, of course: Mourinho protesting Spurs joining the breakaway league, leading to a tipping point disagreement with team brass, would certainly be a more flattering narrative for Mourinho to push. (Of course it would also limit his ability to land a job with one of the Super League clubs if that should actually happen.)
In any case it’s quite a shake up for the final few weeks of the year, and one of the biggest names in football management is once again a free agent.
