Jose Mourinho
A good night for the team?
Good night, good night. The attitude was very good, which is the most important thing, the team was united, the ones playing and the ones on the bench. the spirit was good. good individual performances, amazing goals, no injuries. the kids coming. I’m of course happy with all the respect, our potential is different from their potential, so we cannot take from this results nothing from another world. But, you need to play well to win against these teams, very well organised, very good coach, coming here, try to press us high, brings a back five but two fast strikers trying to get behind us. Very well organised team, even with more power than them you need to play well to beat them.
What did you make of Dele Alli’s goal and performance?
The goal I don’t need to speak, because everyone watched it and I believe that all around the world on all these sports TV, people are going to watch it, no need to talk about it. but for me the globality of the performance is what matters. He played very well in every aspect of the game, he played very well. Of course he’s not fresh, of course you can feel that his performance like in the first leg from minute 55-60 is going always to go down, which is normal due to the circumstances, injured, not training for a long time, coming from a couple of weeks. But in this moment when we are going to play every three days, 10 matches in March, to have Dele back at this level, is amazing. But I wouldn’t say Dele only. Winks, Sissoko, just to give two more examples, to have them back to this level, we need more than ever.
Does his performance give you a selection headache for Sunday?
These are the headaches that I love. The headaches that you don’t like are the headaches of selection. Lots of people not performing. Lots of doubts, by negative reasons. These are the wonderful problems. But playing Sunday, and playing Wednesday at Fulham, and Sunday against Palace, and playing Thursday in Europa League again, that’s what I need. The players they need to understand this concept of team, and the intensity of matches. and if you have everybody ready or play at this level, it’s the best thing to happen to the team.
How pleasing is it to be able to hand out two more debuts to young players and just how much potential has Dane Scarlett got?
Dane has incredible talent. I don’t want to speak too much because tomorrow I arrive in the building and the kid’s boss is going to kill me. I don’t want that so I don’t want to speak too well about him. I just want to say that he will be 17 next month and I want him to be part of the first team squad next season. So this season he is there and here, goes to training sessions with us and matches with the kids of his age and trains there. Next season he has to be a first team player. Immense talent. Very good physical development. He’s very good, he’s going to be very good. I hope that nothing is going to destroy that potential. He must have feet on the ground and head on his shoulders because he has a fantastic talent. And to bring on the other two kids is always a pleasure because in the end it’s a motivation for everyone in the academy. [Nile] John arrived at the club at seven-years-old and ten years later he has his debut at home in the Europa League. It’s fantastic. [Marcel] Lavinier of course has more experience, a little bit older. Always training with us a lot of times. He’s a man, a young man, a very serious full-back, also a player with a future. Was not possible for more kids. Was not possible for Dilan [Markanday] today but one day it will come and for many more.
Is it good to have a fresh Dele in a busy period?
We have a lot to play for, we have Premier League, Europa League, we have a final to play so every player back is a blessing to us. Gio is also coming, we have an incredible number of matches. Seven for us plus three in the national team are 10 in March. Ten matches I believe is impossible for a football player, so when it is impossible you need to have players available for you. We had a problem for a month with only Ben Davies at left-back. Now we have Ben and Reguilon and we need to have that in every position. That’s what we need because we have a lot to play for.
