Mourinho praises a team that “smells good” after Mestalla win

“The team smells good,” José Mourinho said after the 0-3 win at Mestalla. The coach was pleased with the performance and praised a side growing together. Mundo Deportivo reported that the victory, secured before the break, was the team’s eighth in a row in all competitions. “It was a fantastic performance from a team that is growing as a team and smells good, smells good,” he said.

Mourinho contrasted this display with the comeback in Athens. “As I said in Athens, winning after coming from behind in the last minute gives you a great feeling, but it means you haven’t played a perfect match. Today we played a perfect match,” he said. He credited the result to each player understanding what was required while staying focused on the difficulty of the game. The match the following day made the win especially important in his view: it would mean gaining points on one or both of the two teams.

The coach also pointed to his side’s command of the ball and defensive solidity. He said keeping a clean sheet mattered for morale, and maintained that the opposition had only one chance, stopped by Courtois with the score still 0-0. He also praised the group’s attitude: all the players, he said, remained engaged and knew they would get opportunities. A run of four difficult away games, with travel and little time for sleep or training, made the performance at the end of that stretch all the more valuable.

Mourinho also voiced concern about the break. In his view, the players needed rest rather than more work after reaching an extreme level of fatigue, even though they had to join their national teams on Monday and Tuesday. He said he respected the national-team coaches while stressing the need for close attention to recovery.

Asked about his figures in LaLiga, he said they mattered only in relation to the next match. He said he was proud to be associated with a league that had hosted so many top coaches, but brought the focus back to the next fixture. The credit, he said, belonged to the players: their solidarity, unity and reaction whenever they lost the ball helped explain why the team “smells good”.

Finally, he described Mestalla as a place of passion and Valencia as a demanding environment for its teams and players. He said the Madrid’s individual and collective superiority could cause frustration. Inside the dressing room, he concluded, the mood remained calm despite music he called awful and too loud: wins had to be treated normally, without allowing the noise outside to spread through the group.