José Mourinho labelled one of Southampton’s backroom staff “an idiot”, as his Spurs side lost in a dispiriting 1-0 defeat on the south coast.
Mourinho who is known to be easily-angered when loosing also accused the St Mary’s ballboys of being coached to waste time and said VAR “should be rebranded”.
While reacting on his yellow card after he confronted the Southampton goalkeeping coach, Andrew Sparkes, in the Saints’ dugout for what he felt was ‘Time wasting’, the Tottenham manager admitted he was booked for being rude and also revealed he “had bad words with the guy.”
He said: “I think the yellow card is fair because I was rude, but I was rude to an idiot,” said Mourinho. “For some reason I was rude. But I was, and because I was rude I deserve the yellow card. Basically, I had bad words with the guy.”
Mourinho also turned his ire on Southampton’s ballboys. “The second half was not easy.”
“They were winning, they were defending basically with 10 players, fighting hard and being aggressive, a good aggressive, with lots of fouls, lots of [times] the match stopped and the ballboys were well-coached in the delaying of the game and there was not much play.”
Then came his blast at VAR, insisting officials should be renamed. “In this moment the referees are not the referees. I think the VAR should change their name because ‘video assistant referee’, that’s not true. It should be VR, video referees because they are the referees, they are the assistant. It is strange because you see the referees on the pitch and they are not the referees, they are the assistant referees. The other guys in [Stockley Park], they are the ones that make the big decisions in the game.”