The legendary football manager, and currently managing Roma Jose Mourinho has come out with a statement that said African players should represent their home countries. This statement was meant to say that African countries can also rise up for the World Cup if they have more powerful players.
He claims that African nations should also experience winning the FIFA World Cup as by far it has only been won by mostly European and Latin American countries. However, a netizen commented that once a player achieves dual nationality, they can opt for which country to serve for, hence it boils down to what the player wants.
Facebook comments about Mourinho’s statement
There are some netizens defending Jose Mourinho’s statement of better representation of players. One netizen stated that they’re from Congo and they “hate” seeing other Congolese people representing European nations in the World Cup, as they feel it’s not fair to their own home land.
This recently resurfaced on a Facebook football fan page and has received over 2,900 likes and 300 comments. The original statement came out all the way back in June of 2022, where it did receive quite a number of conflicting comments towards Mourinho’s statement.
Netizens called his bluff saying that African players have better nurturing in Europe due to having a more “stable” environment growing up. They further added that having better facilities in Europe would equate to better winnings for a specific country.
Others opposed that statement saying that facilities are not the only determining factor for a player to win a World Cup. The same person claimed that “politics” won the World Cup, a brave accusation against FIFA. The original commenter responded with “are there any countries that lack football training facilities that have ever won the world cup?”
TikTok craze over Mourinho
@stinson.barney I am José Mourinho TikTok sample!! #iamjosemourinho #sample #uncut #memesample #meme #funny #manchestercity
As it is, Jose Mourinho is a well known figure. Some even dubbed him as the Cristiano Ronaldo of football club managers. He even went viral on TikTok where his audio of him stating “I am Jose Mourinho” garnered high engagement all over the short video platform. Most that reused his audio weren’t even talking about football nor are they even football fans.
https://www.tiktok.com/@frenchy_fifa/video/7124852942317915394?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1
Most of the time, the audio would be applied to videos of either netizens or influencers getting away with the weirdest problems or buying really expensive items and then shrugging the costs off. The trend lasted for months, apparently some of them can still pop up on the for you page, depending on the relevance of the content.
Twitter comments about his statement
Mourinho: 🗣“I want the world to see that Africa is equal with everyone, Africans are not behind with talent. They have talent to win any tournament, except that most of their Best players are scattered around the world playing for other countries instead of their homelands.” 👇🏾
— Chief Mighty George (@iamMightyGeorge) June 24, 2022
In June he stated, “I want the world to see that Africa is equal with everyone, Africans are not behind with talent. They have the talent to win any tournament, except that most of their Best players are scattered around the world playing for other countries instead of their homelands.”
“I know i won’t be popular for making this statement but FIFA should make things fair by refusing to let players represent other countries, this will make FIFA tournaments even more competitive and not one-sided.”
Netizens went quick to attack France as they are the country with mostly foreign players in their team for the World Cup. Others were claiming what he stated was considered as racism. This is due to the African players living in Europe their whole lives and it would be foreign to them to play in another country regardless of their origins.
Some were questioning Mourinho’s statement, asking if this applies to African born players, or African originated players with parents born in another country. Another netizen replied saying that he meant for all African originated people, regardless if they were born in Europe or not.
Here are more Jose Mourinho stories for your reading.