7 players who have been reduced to tears by Jose Mourinho: Ronaldo, Ozil, Salah…

Jose Mourinho is one of football’s most iconic and successful coaches, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Just ask some of the superstars who worked under him at Chelsea, Manchester United and Real Madrid.

For all the medals and success, Mourinho’s reigns are just as defined by emotional wreckage. From public humiliations to private dressing-room bust-ups, his confrontational methods have left some of the game’s biggest names visibly broken, and, in some cases, literally reduced to tears.

Here are seven players Mourinho made cry.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo arguably produced the best football of his career under Mourinho.

He scored 120 goals in just 106 appearances under his Portuguese compatriot and was the star man when Real Madrid ended Barcelona’s era of dominance with a record-breaking 100-point campaign in 2011-12.

But there was always tension, particularly in Mourinho’s terse final season in the Spanish capital.

“Mourinho’s reaction surprised me,” Luka Modric recalled in his biography ‘My Game’.

“We were winning 2-0 in the Copa del Rey.

“Ronaldo didn’t follow his man at a throw-in and Jose was furious with Cristiano. The two fought for a long time on the pitch.

“When we went back into the dressing room at half-time, I saw Ronaldo upset, on the verge of tears. He said ‘I’m doing the best I can and he’s still criticising me’.

“Mourinho came in and started to criticise the Portuguese for his responsibility during the game.

“It got so heated between them that only the intervention of the players prevented a proper fight between them.”

Mesut Ozil

Ronaldo wasn’t the only one who bore the brunt of Mourinho’s temper during his time at the Bernabeu.

Writing in his 2017 book ‘Gunning For Greatness’, Ozil told the story of receiving both barrels, having been perceived to be soft in the tackle by the former Los Blancos boss.

“Now Mourinho’s talking very calmly,” Ozil recalled, of how things came to a head.

“He’s no longer hot-tempered and loud, but controlled, which makes me even madder. How can he compose himself like that while I’m on the verge of losing it? I’m so pissed off. I’d love to chuck my boots at his head. I want him to stop. To leave me in peace finally.

“’Do you know what, Mesut?’ Mourinho says, louder now so that everyone can hear. ‘Cry if you like! Sob away! You’re such a baby. Go and take a shower. We don’t need you.’

“Slowly I get up, slip out of my boots, grab my towel, and walk silently past the manager to the showers, without dignifying him with so much as a glance. Instead, he lobs one final provocation in my direction. ‘You’re not Zinedine Zidane, you know. No! Never! You’re not even in the same league!’

“I feel my throat constricting. Those last words of his are like a stab to the heart. Mourinho knows exactly what he’s saying. He knows how much I admire that player. He knows the Frenchman is the only footballer I truly look up to.”

Mohamed Salah

Liverpool’s Egyptian King spent a short and not particularly successful spell working under Mourinho at Chelsea. He made just 19 appearances under Mourinho, notching two goals and three assists.

“They were so unlucky that the boss, Mourinho, then didn’t take any prisoners,” John Obi Mikel recalled on his Obi One podcast.

“If you weren’t doing your job, it didn’t matter who you were, he would have a go at you.

“He had a go at Mohamed Salah at half-time once and he was in tears crying. We thought ‘Okay, he’s going to let him back on the pitch,’ But then he destroyed the kid and then pulled him off. But that was just his mentality back then.

“But would Mourinho do that now? I think no.”

READ: A ridiculously good XI of players Jose Mourinho has fallen out with

Angel Gomes

Gomes became Manchester United’s youngest player in the Premier League era when Mourinho handed him his debut aged just 16 on the final day of the 2016-17 season.

He’s gone on to enjoy a decent career, representing England and proving himself in Ligue 1, but his early years at Old Trafford weren’t easy.

“He didn’t think I had played up to standard [in a reserves match] to warrant a place in the first-team squad, and he just really let me know,” Gomes told The Times.

“At the time I was thinking, ‘Why has he done that in front of everyone? Could he not have pulled me to the side?’

“A few of the players came up to me and said, ‘He just wants a reaction from you, don’t let it faze you’, but in that moment I didn’t want to hear anything.

“I rushed to my room and rang my dad and my brother. There’s not much they could say to me really. I was almost crying. I was really young.

“It wasn’t until I was older that I realised, with Mourinho, he’s always looking at ways to get more out of you. I think him doing that in front of everyone showed he valued me as a player. I probably needed it.”

Benni McCarthy

A novel one, this.

McCarthy wasn’t left in tears by Mourinho’s criticism, but rather knowing he was onto something special after meeting him for the first time.

“I arrived at Porto in 2001 in a bad state. I scored on my debut and we won, but then the manager (Octavio Machado) was sacked,” the striker told The Athletic.

“I couldn’t believe that the man who took me there got fired. This young guy replaced him and said: ‘Benni, I know of you and I have watched you.

“‘I think you are a fantastic player and I want you to be my guy’. Then Jose Mourinho proceeded to tell me all about me. He knew everything; he’d watched my games at Celta.

“How did he have this information? Jose told me that I could always speak to him, even if it was to get something off my chest. I started crying, really. I thought ‘Wow!’ This had not happened to me in Europe.

“He was treating me like a son and I thought, ‘I cannot disappoint this guy, he has given me the lifeline that I want’. I wanted to run through a brick wall for him.”

Marco Materazzi

Some light to the shade with this one.

“When I had these last words with Materazzi, it was like I was hugging every player,” Mourinho recalled of the viral clip of his emotional embrace, shortly after the 2010 Champions League final victory, when it was all but confirmed he was leaving for Real Madrid.

“I told him “f**k you” because he was leaving me with Benitez,” Materazzi later joked.

🥲🥲🥲 When Jose Mourinho was leaving Inter Milan, some players were devastated.

As he was being driven out, he noticed Marco Materazzi crying and he had to stop. pic.twitter.com/8sGILXetdz

— @𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗷𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗯𝗼𝘆 (@OneJoblessBoy) November 23, 2021

John Terry & the Chelsea squad

Materazzi wasn’t the only player to be left distraught at Mourinho’s departure.

Chelsea captain Terry and the rest of the Blues squad reacted emotionally to news of the legendary coach’s sacking at Stamford Bridge back in 2007.

“We were all in tears,” Terry told Sky Sports.

“It was one of those moments where there were whispers going around, we weren’t performing as well, we weren’t doing as well in the league, and then he came in and said: ‘That’s it, I’ve been sacked.’ He went around and gave everyone a hug and a cuddle.

“Full-grown men crying their eyes out. We were thinking: ‘Where do we go from here?’ We had someone like a father figure, guiding us.

“We actually spoke to the board and said: ‘Listen, we want him to stay, can we not bring him back? It’s a rash decision, he’s the best we’ve worked with.’

“Unfortunately, they’d made their decision. But yes, there were full-grown men in absolute tears.

“He was so demanding on the group, and he pushed us to our limits at times. It’s not until you finish playing that you realise why he did what he did.”

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