Mourinho involved in bizarre laptop VAR protest

Jose Mourinho was booked during Fenerbahce‘s 2-0 win at Antalyaspor on Sunday for placing a laptop in front of the TV cameras to protest an offside refereeing decision.

With Fenerbahce 1-0 up in the 76th minute, referee Cihan Aydin disallowed Edin Dzeko’s goal for offside after VAR intervention.

Mourinho then proceeded to put a laptop showing a still image of that action and placed it in front of the broadcaster’s ground camera as a sign of protest and was shown a yellow card.

“For us it was a good goal,” Mourinho said in Sunday’s post-game news conference. “I didn’t say a single word. I didn’t put any kind of pressure, I just put the laptop in there … I just reacted calmly.

“The referee decided to give me a yellow card. It’s OK. I want a VAR that helps the referee. My analyst put the laptop in front of me with the position of the left-back that probably was not the position that VAR analysed because we have the technical camera that gives us the complete width of the pitch and the let-back was in position.”

Fenerbahce, who had taken a lead through Dusan Tadic, secured the win thanks to an own goal by Thalisson Kelven. The result keeps Fenerbahce in second-place, three points behind Galatasaray, and Mourinho said the upcoming international break won’t help in his side’s pursuit of the title.

“In the international break we do nothing because we don’t have players,” Mourinho said. “We can just keep six or seven players, the ones that are not selected to go or others that no longer play in their national teams.

“International break for us is never positive, I would say in fact that it is negative … We have lots of things to work on, one of the things is players have to understand my concept, simplicity is genius.

“We have too many players that don’t understand that, the best players they play one touch, two-touch football. It’s simple, a cross and a goal, it doesn’t need 20 touches … football is simplicity.”

Mourinho also spoke about the pressure he’s felt at Fenerbahce in the summer being self-inflicted.

“The pressure I feel is the pressure I put on myself,” he said. “It’s not the pressure that anyone puts on me. I have around 1200 official matches, it’s too long to feel pressure from anybody, not journalists, not supporters, not opponents. I always want to do the things right, I always want to win, which is not possible. So the pressure is the pressure that I put in myself.”