See what coach Mourinho had to say ahead of Thursday's important Europa League group stage meeting with Real Betis in Seville...
The game at the Benito Villamarin gets underway at 18:45 local time.
Do you think it’s possible that the unusual nature of this season – with the break in between and everything else – has brought with it an elevated risk of injuries? And, as for tomorrow’s game, are Andrea Belotti and Stephan El Shaarawy in line to start?
“This is a good question. It’s a question where we can all have our own thoughts on it. We’ve been talking about it for a long time now; it feels like it’s already been four or five months that we’ve been talking about this World Cup. But the truth is that right now we have to cope with the circumstances it has created. I’ve learned to cry less about things and instead try and deal with the reality of them.
“You could say that there are too many games, you could say that today’s players have completely different careers and challenges to those of years ago, you could say that the rich clubs are privileged because they have squads that allow them to use their players in a different way to the less rich clubs, which have more problems.
“But the truth is that there are rich clubs, poor clubs and then the less rich clubs. The poor clubs play one game a week and can prepare for that game for the whole week. The rich clubs, with the squads they have, could play every day and still make 10 changes. The less rich, who have more moderate ambitions but still have to play the same number of games as the rich, are those who end up in difficulty. And that’s what I’m having to go through right now.
“As for Belotti and El Shaarawy, neither of them. It’s all open.”
It feels like Tammy Abraham has been struggling a bit in the last few games – do you think his issues are physical or mental?
“The problem is with us, it’s a team issue. I don’t like to dig into this sort of analysis. I get that you guys want to. It’s easy enough to find top players in other squads who are going through similar spells, both in Italy and oversees. For you guys it’s all numbers and statistics. For us, the truth is that we need goals in order to win games.
“If you won games based on the number of chances you created, then we would be top of Serie A right now – because we create loads and we miss loads. That happens sometimes. And sooner or later another side will pay the price for that, because we will score goals from four chances.
“The key thing is that we focus on things as a team and we don’t put pressure on individuals like you want to. You guys have a different job. For us it’s not about Player A, Player B or Player C and how many goals they have or haven’t score: we face things as a team and, considering the chances we are making, we are not scoring enough. That’s the direction we need to move in – as a group we need to score more and be more efficient in front of goal. It will happen.”
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Source: legaseriea.it