DT Exclusive: Jose Mourinho responds to Alan Pardew’s claim that Arsene Wenger is better than him
December 12, 2014
In a recent defense of Arsene Wenger, Newcastle manager/troll king Alan Pardew declared that the Arsenal boss ranks higher than Jose Mourinho on the list of the best manager in Premier League history (all 22 years of it!). Though this is not an entirely unreasonable assertion, it is one that Jose Mourinho would almost certainly disagree with. So we asked him. Except, you know…not really.
DT: Jose, Alan Pardew says that Arsene Wenger ranks ahead of you on the list of the Premier League’s greatest managers.
Mourinho: What?
DT: According to him, “After Sir Alex Ferguson he’s the best manager in Premier League history. José Mourinho hasn’t done enough yet.” Any response to that?
DT: Jose? A response?
Mourinho: Wait, I am not finished laughing so hard that I cannot breathe.
DT: I’ll wait.
Mourinho: OK, I’m done. No wait…yes, I am done. He thinks I have not done enough to be better than Wenger? Maybe because I was too busy winning Champions League with Porto and Inter and Wenger was winning it with no one and going nine years without a trophy. Or maybe because I have never lost to him. Maybe in Alan Pardew’s opposite land, where he deserves to be Newcastle manager forever and Wenger is better than me, this is true, but in the real world, this is not.
DT: To be fair, Wenger has won three Premier League titles and five FA Cups and you’ve only won two league titles and one FA Cup. He even had an undefeated season.
Mourinho: And now he is a specialist in failure. When you divide his trophies by the number of years he went without winning anything in which any other manager would have been sacked 10 times over, he has done less than me. This is mathematics. You cannot dispute this.
DT: Pardew also said that Emirates Stadium should be named after Wenger.
Mourinho: I agree. On that, I agree with Alan.
DT: You do?
Mourinho: Yes. Failure Stadium. I can see it now…
