The incident leading to Manchester United’s first half goal being disallowed against Tottenham at the weekend led to a bizarre back and forth between the two managers.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, infuriated with Heung-Min Son’s exaggeration of Scott McTominay’s ‘foul’ joked about the extent to which he was unhappy with the South Korean.
He told Sky Sports: “I have to say, if my son stays down like this for three minutes and gets 10 of his mates around him… if he gets that in the face from one of his other mates and he needs 10 of his mates to help him up, he won’t get any food.”
This seemed to trigger Mourinho, who responded, “I just want to say, Sonny is very lucky that his father is a better person than Ole, because I think a father – I am a father – you have to always feed your kids, it doesn’t matter what they do.”
Solskjaer’s son weighs in and cuts straight to the point
The next step in the story, was of course for the media to speak to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s son Noah about how he actually was treated.
Noah Solskjaer, a young footballer with Kristiansund, told local Norwegian newspaper Tidens Krav: “Yes, I laughed a lot on Sunday too, I always get food, I can assure everyone about that.
“I have never been lying down the way Son did. Mourinho probably just wanted to take the focus away from the fact they had lost.”
And with that last line, Solskjaer’s son showed more insight than the national media in England have displayed ever since the fallout of Sunday’s match.
Of course Mourinho was looking for a distraction.
He had just lost at home to Manchester United for the first time, and this was the first time ever one of his teams had lost 10 league games in a season.
His Spurs side were thoroughly outplayed and slumped to 7th in the Premier League table, six points back from fourth place.
Instead of the media questioning Mourinho or criticising him over his team’s poor performance, they wasted time reporting on his jibe back at Solskjaer as if it was the most important issue.
Sir Alex Ferguson used to be the master of distracting the media, and Mourinho, even in defeat, has them eating out of the palm of his hand, too easily finding a way to distract reporters from his team’s shortcomings.
At least Noah Solskjaer, 20, had the necessary insight to see the situation for what it was, a load of hot air from Mourinho aimed at self-preservation.
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