Jose Mourinho hits back at Mikel Arteta and Arsenal criticism

Jose Mourinho has hit back at the criticism Mikel Arteta received during Arsenal’s Premier League title-winning campaign last season.

Arsenal won the title for the first time in 22 years last month as they finished seven points clear of Manchester City at the top of the Premier League.

The Gunners also reached their first Champions League final since 2006 but they were beaten on penalties by Paris Saint-Germain.

However, Arteta faced scrutiny over Arsenal’s pragmatic playing style and the team’s reliance on set-pieces, which represented a 35 per cent share of their goals and is the highest percentage of any title winner since the Premier League began in 1992.

Mourinho, who has returned to Real Madrid this summer, has been subjected to similar criticism during his managerial career but the three-time Premier League title winner with Chelsea insists Arsenal are right not to imitate Manchester City’s playing style.

When asked about the criticism Arsenal and Arteta received last season, Mourinho said in an interview with Vanity Fair: ‘Nowadays, but even before, there was a silly theory of, “You can be great without winning.” For me, it’s totally silly. It goes against the nature of sport, because in sport, the objective is to win.

‘I don’t like that [criticism about style of play]. I don’t agree with that. I think people work and try to win with the best qualities that your team can have.

‘In relation to Arsenal, I believe that if Arsenal tried to be a second Man City, probably they wouldn’t win. So they won. You have to respect the winners.

‘This is what I do in relation to Arsenal, but no, no, I don’t look back, I don’t compare ourselves with them. Because at the end of the day, that Inter team that won that Champions League — before that iconic defensive match where we played with 10 men for more than one hour — one week before, we beat Barcelona 3-1.

‘And people don’t speak about scoring three goals and winning 3-1 against Barcelona. They prefer to talk about what I consider one of the best-ever defensive performances by a team that with 10 men resisted for more than one hour against the best team in the world at that time.

‘It’s also about playing amazing and scoring a lot of goals. And it’s incredible because Barcelona is seen as the team that plays amazing football. Barcelona is seen as the team that scores a lot of goals. But this is a big contradiction. The team that scored [the most] goals in the history of Spanish football was my Real Madrid in 2011-12, with 121 goals and 100 points in one season. How defensive was that team?’

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