Mourinho will not sacrifice the team to benefit Vinicius

“I am not going to harm the team to benefit one player,” José Mourinho said about Vinicius. On the eve of the upcoming LaLiga match against Valencia, the coach defended an approach guided by the team’s needs, while acknowledging that his side faced a difficult game after competing midweek.

Mourinho said his players had arrived at 03:00 on Friday and stayed together to gain a few extra hours of sleep. He reported positive feedback from the squad but played down the situation: “It will be complicated, but tomorrow we will be there,” he said.

Fatigue is not his only concern. The coach considers Valencia particularly dangerous, in part because his opponent is fresh and needs points. “The difficulty of tomorrow’s match is my concern,” he said, describing the prospect as something that gives him “fear in quotation marks”. He believes the opposition will be focused on winning, making the task difficult.

Asked about Vinicius’s role, Mourinho rejected the idea of compromising the team’s balance for an individual. He recalled that, in his view, the match against AEK was an opportunity to play Vinicius and give Güler a rest. His decisions, he explained, also have to account for the sequence of upcoming games. He praised Vinicius’s potential and said he would keep working with him when available, while noting the high expectations placed on the player.

Mourinho also said Konaté and Dean would play the following day, despite Militao and Rüdiger having performed well in the previous match. He linked that choice to the Saturday schedule, which allows players involved with their national teams to spend a day with their families.

On Cristiano Ronaldo, Mourinho declined to assess his departure from Portugal’s national team and stressed that, in his view, it was not the end of his career. He also described Valverde as humble and exemplary, saying that his official role as Real Madrid captain had given him a stronger sense of responsibility.

Mourinho also addressed the Atlético de Madrid-Barcelona match. He would prefer both teams to lose, he said, but the result did not matter to him because one of them would drop points. On Jesús De Miguel, he argued that the player’s family, friends and teammates were best placed to say what kind of tribute he would have wanted. And while he said that coming from behind can reflect a group’s strength, he also called for greater consistency at the start of matches, adding that there was still work to do.