Sporting manager Ruben Amorim reveals what Jose Mourinho texted him after beating Arsenal
Ruben Amorim, the leader of a sports team, has rejected any likenesses between himself and Jose Mourinho. However, he shared that the manager of Roma sent him a message via text after his team’s victory against Arsenal in the Europa League on Thursday.
Sporting managed to take the game into extra time after Pedro Goncalves scored an impressive long-range chip to cancel out Granit Xhaka’s goal, leading to a 2-2 draw in the first leg.
Despite Arsenal being the stronger team in extra time, Sporting’s experienced goalkeeper Antonio Adan made several excellent saves, including denying Gabriel Martinelli in the shootout, leading Sporting to progress to the quarter-finals.
When questioned about the similarities between himself and Mourinho, and whether his success against Arsenal would increase his popularity, Amorim gave no indication of being affected by such comparisons or outside opinions.
Amorim replied: “The new Mourinho? There will never be a new Mourinho.
“Mourinho is one of a kind. He’s already texted me, “The old and the new [Mourinho] are still in, I’ll see you in the next stage!”
‘But there won’t be another Mourinho.
“And I won’t forget what we’ve gone through this year, and that can happen again. We spoke four weeks ago about me potentially losing my job, I’m not really worried about that.
“And all the words I had before the game, even going through, the objective is that I’m very happy here, the objective is to win one more league for Sporting – which is very important.
“But I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, but that’s not going to worry me because everything in my life has happened very quick without really looking for much.
“The new Mourinho I won’t be, but I’m happy to carry on at Sporting’s project.”
Reflecting on his side’s performance against the Premier League leaders, Amorim continued: ‘I saw a lot of maturity from my players. We went behind in both games, we managed to make our way back both times.
“Obviously we needed to have the technical, physical and mental capacity to keep up with them – a team that plays a very different rhythm compared to our league.
“We needed to have a good day and the players were really good. More than the result, it’s the way we actually played that’s the most important thing to carry on.”
Sporting manager Ruben Amorim reveals what Jose Mourinho texted him after beating Arsenal
