The widely-shared Jose Mourinho quote on Mikel Arteta appears to be fake, despite the former Tottenham Hotspur manager praising his Arsenal counterpart in 2020.
A Jose Mourinho “quote” has been doing the rounds on social media, with the former Spurs and Chelsea manager appearing to predict the future of Mikel Arteta’s side. The problem is that it appears to be fake.
Let’s first take a look at the apparent quotes, according to @EGTVEgal on Twitter.
This is what Jose Mourinho said about Mikel Arteta some seasons ago when his Spurs team faced Arsenal after the game. pic.twitter.com/6z327oobRy
— Egal (@EGTVEgal) October 1, 2023
Before you go sending him abuse, Egal hasn’t made these quotes up. They’ve appeared on other social media sites before.
In June, there was a Reddit post sharing the same lines.
But before that, nothing. No footage, no articles, no reason to believe Mourinho ever said the above.
Some of you may be confused. Perhaps you have a vague recollection of Mourinho saying some nice things about Arsenal back in 2020. And that’s because he did!
There are some genuine quotes out there, such as the following:
“I want to give good words and congratulations to Mikel because he gave us a very difficult game,” Mourinho said.
“Tactically, they are very good, they were very well organised, they were building with four, defending with five.
“Then in the second half, they were trying to find triangles on the side and they gave us problems, problems that we managed to resolve because the players in this moment they have good tactical culture.
“And even above that, they have an incredible spirit, but they gave us problems because they are a good team and he (Arteta) is a good coach. But we deserved to win, I guess, because two amazing goals.
“I can imagine tomorrow the headlines will be about them not being in a good position on the table. But I believe with these players, with Mikel, Arsenal will be Arsenal again.”
But many of the other quotes seem to have no basis in reality.
Unless new evidence comes to light, Mourinho didn’t say “I can read situations in advance”, he didn’t praise Arteta’s “massive trust to the youth” or “massive man management”, and he didn’t say “I know now people will hear this and laugh”.
Perhaps most importantly, Mourinho didn’t say “I think they will be such a threat when he gets his plan across and I told him that I hope he gets time”.
These quotes appear to have been fabricated to make Mourinho’s actual comments seem more impressive.
The real comments still give Arteta’s coaching some deserved praise, and the line that “Arsenal will be Arsenal again” under Arteta was genuine, and a great quote.
The rest appears to be the usual social media nonsense.