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Spurs coach José Mourinho says the postponement of his team’s Premier League game with Fulham reminded him of when he was an under-13 soccer coach.
Wednesday’s game was suspended three hours before kick-off due to the number of Fulham players testing positive for coronavirus or showing symptoms. Mourinho called the late notice “unprofessional.”
The Premier League wrote to the clubs explaining that the decision had been left so late because it had just received the full test results and medical advice.
But Mourinho is unhappy about the lack of communication, given speculation about a postponement for almost 24 hours before the final call was made.
“When I was training under-13s and under-15s in Portugal 30 years ago, you would come to a match at 9:30 a.m. And sometimes the opponent was not there or the referee was not,” he said. .
“It was very frustrating for the children, who wanted to play soccer, but couldn’t and only found out in the last minutes. That’s almost what happened to us. We almost reached the stadium to find that we weren’t playing.
“But the day before the game, the press was full of reports that the game was going to be postponed. Players were telling me that it was being reported in their own countries, but I couldn’t tell them and neither could my boss, Mr. [Daniel] Levy.
“I’m not talking about Fulham. I’m talking about the organization. I don’t think it’s possible to have a situation like that.”
There has been no clarity from the Premier League on when Fulham’s game will be played.
With Tottenham and Fulham playing on different weeks during this month’s split round of matches, finding off dates won’t be easy.
If the Spurs beat Brentford in the EFL Cup semi-final on January 5, Fulham’s reverse game at Craven Cottage on April 24 will have to be moved. Their continued participation in the Europa League rules out most of the weekdays and the extended progress in the FA Cup would create additional delay.
For Mourinho, it feels worryingly like September, when his team would have been forced to play two games in three days in successive weeks if his EFL Cup tie with Leyton Orient had not been canceled.
Mourinho was unhappy with that congestion and has suggested that he will decline if told to go through the same thing again later in the season.
“Nobody talked much about the extreme situation we had in the preseason, probably because people thought it was just a Europa League tie,” he said.
“But the situation we had to go through was inhumane. It’s impossible. We have to refuse to go through that again. We can’t accept it at all if some Einstein comes up with the idea of what they did before and have four games of the Premier League. ” with a day in between. “
The Premier League has declined to comment.
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