Tottenham Hotspur coach, Jose Mourinho in agreement with his Liverpool counterpart, Jurgen Klopp says the Champions League winner, Hansi Flick should have won the FIFA Award for the Best Male coach category.
Klopp beat Flick and Leeds United manager, Marcelo Bielsa to the award on December 17.
Reacting to the latest development, the Portuguese tactician said Flick’s only chance to collect The Best FIFA Men’s Coach award in the future will be if Bayern Munich finds new competitions to win.
Flick, who replaced Niko Kovak at the helms of the club’s football affairs led Bayern to a Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, and Champions League treble. The Bavarian club has also lifted the UEFA Super Cup and DFL Super Cup in 2020.
So, giving the award to Klopp, who led Liverpool to a historical Premier League triumph last season raised a few eyebrows as Flick was overlooked at FIFA’s annual awards ceremony on Thursday. The Liverpool coach had won the award last season after leading the Reds to their fifth Champions League title and his own first.
During his adress to the media after being announced the winner, Klopp admitted his own surprise at being given the award at the expense of Flick.
“I’m grateful for it, obviously. From the first moment, like everybody else, I was looking at it a bit wide-eyed, like, how did that happen?,” asked Klopp who expected Flick to pick up the award.
Mourinho wonders what else Hansi Flick needs to achieve to win FIFA Award
Speaking on Wednesday night after Liverpool defeated his team 2-1 at Anfield, Mourinho said may be if the German coach won seven titles in a season, he will be honoured by the football ruling body.
“I think the only chance for Flick to win is that Bayern finds two or three more new competitions to win it,” Mourinho said with a laugh.
“So maybe if he wins seven titles in one season maybe he wins the award because I believe he only won the Champions League, Bundesliga, Pokal, European Super Cup, German Super Cup – he only won five and the biggest one of all.
“So I think poor Flick the only chance is for Bayern to try and find two or three more trophies to see if he can win it,” Mourinho summed for Flick as FIFA Award went to Klopp.
Spurs to start again against Leicester
Now that Liverpool has returned to the summit of the Premier League table after their 2-1 victory over Spurs that has been there for some weeks, the league position is settling gradually.
Mourinho is not expected to give in easily after surrendering the top spot in the Premier League to the Reds.
🎙️ Jose provides an injury update ahead of Sunday’s game against Leicester.
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) December 18, 2020
📺 Watch the full press conference on YouTube ⤵️#THFC ⚪️ #COYS
He has trained his team to sit deep, especially in bigger matches and hit their opponent on counter, using the advantage of the devastating forms of the striking duo of Harry Kane and Heung-Min Son which has been effective.
Same was against Liverpool,where Spurs recorded just 24.2 percent possession, had 254 passes to Liverpool’s 813 and had a pass accuracy of just 61.4%.
The numbers were not different when they recorded a 2-0n win over Arsenal in the north London derby on December 6 – they had 30.2% possession, 288 passes, and 67.4% passing accuracy.
Undettered about his team’s stats against tip teams, one thing that matters to Mourinho is getting the maximum points.
“You love the word ‘possession’ and you love the stats. You [the media] in general. It is a little bit like the efficiency of players and sometimes you say ‘the stats say player B had 92% of efficiency on his passing.’
“But the stats don’t say that that player only made passes of two meters… they don’t say that that player was a center-back that only passed to the other center-back or a number six who only passed the ball to number eight, and the guy who had 65% efficiency on his passes is the guy that made the assists… the guy that makes the tight passes, the guy that makes 60 meters passes to change the direction of the play.
“So the stats, many, many times are like an incredible piece of meat or fish but badly cooked. It doesn’t tell me much. What tells me is the number of goals that you score and the number of chances that you create.”
From such a statement what matters to the tactician is how he get results and continue to bring out the best in his squad as they continue to be defensively solid.
As they welcome Leicester tomorrow, it is expected that there will be a repeat of such tactics and the Foxes might pay dearly for it.
However, Leicester is also good in that aspect with Jamie Vardy very handful in counter-attacking moves. Lets’ just wait and see who outwits each other this time around as Mourinho faces his former assistant, Brendan Rogers again.
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