January 6 – The debate over the number of foreign managers in the Premier League has been given fresh impetus – by none other than Chelsea’s own Portuguese boss Jose Mourinho.
Love him or loathe him, Mourinho invariably speaks his mind and even he thinks the trend of hiring foreign managers has gone too far.
“In this moment in the Premier League – and I’m speaking against myself – I disagree with so many foreign coaches in this country,” Mourinho told the British media. “I don’t see a reason for that because I don’t feel the English managers are in any point behind the foreign ones.”
Currently there are nine non-British and Irish managers in English football’s top flight, the latest appointment being Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who has taken over at Cardiff from Malky Mackay.
There were no foreign managers when the Premier League was formed in 1992 and Mourinho says that trend should be reversed, with England managers trying their luck abroad .
“I think if there are no jobs in the country as a manager or a player then you have to go (abroad) because this is a short professional life,” he said.
“I have to say, the ones that are coming, and I can analyse (them) one by one, all of them are good coaches and good people and they try to do good jobs for them and for their clubs. So I’m not saying these people are not top people or people that don’t deserve to be here the same way I deserve to be here. I just feel sorry that in a country like England, that is the country of so many managers, they (British managers) are not getting enough jobs in this country.
“At the end of the day, influence from abroad is good, you can learn the differences from other cultures, but I think the main culture has to be always the English, or in this case the British culture.”
Mourinho believes there is a difference between the current crop of foreign coaches in the Premier League and when he first arrived on English shores for his first spell at Chelsea, having won the Champions League with Porto.
“When I came here, I came here as a European champion. I didn’t come here to try to have success for the first time or to try to tell you who I was. I was coming here already with something in my pocket. And if you bring somebody who has proved something already, then I think you can say this guy has something to give.”
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