You can’t truly have a real story, unless there is some kind of conflict or obstacle that must be resolved. Controversy and clashing is what moves the needle and gets the people’s attention. The media knows this all too well, and certainly often goes the extra distance to play along with this concept.
Thus, one can’t help but he surprised to see all these negative takes in the media on the mother of all rows between Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho and Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho. For the media, it seems like they are either a.) strangling their own golden goose a little bit, or b.) acting a tad hypocritical.
The general majority here seems to believe that the feud between Mourinho and Conte, which gets uglier and uglier by the day, is a terrible thing for the sport.
Before diving into the op-eds on the situation, let’s review how we got here in the first place. Mourinho made comments about how he doesn’t act like a clown on the touchline. Conte responded by saying Mourinho is suffering from amnesia, not recalling his past antics. Mourinho retaliated by bringing up match-fixing. Conte fired back by calling Mourinho a little man and a hypocrite.
The feud actually goes further back than this, but in the interest of brevity sake, we just focused on the altercations of the last few days.
It’s kind of like a Premier League football manager version of the nuclear button measuring contest between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. You don’t know who will inevitably be the bigger man here to turn the other cheek and finally call this nonsense off. Until then, we just can’t look away. With no legitimate title race to consume us right now, many football observers have instead fixated on this hostile back and forth.
Here’s what a few outlets are saying about what has become the most contentious personal individual feud of the Premier League era.
The Daily Mail slams Mourinho, and believes that Conte bested Mourinho in a verbal conflict, something other managers could not. Riath Al-Samarrai writes:
Indeed, just as he used to be a serial title winner, he was once also the master of the mouth.
Now, he is miles behind Pep Guardiola in the table, a winner of one league crown in the past five-and-a-half seasons, and he has been fronted up and knocked down by Conte in this row.
That is not to endorse some of Conte’s messages — what he said about senile dementia was tasteless — and none of this reflects that well on either of them. But it is telling on the matter of Mourinho’s diminishing aura that Conte is the first manager to stand up to him and give as much as he’s taken.
At the same outlet, Chris Sutton writes that he cannot remember two managers having a row of such a personal nature, and calls this spat the worst in recent memory.
He points out how both men: “seem intent on having the last word but this has gone too far. Normally it would take a phone call between them to sort this out but these two may be too stubborn for that. Neither manager has come out of this well.”
Another Mail writer, Martin Keown, called this conflict terrible for the sport and believes the league should step in now and put a stop to it.
Moving over to ESPN FC, Gab Marcotti writes that anger is rising in the Premier League, and that sportsmanship in England is right now worse than in Italy and Spain. His column also includes the verbal assaults that Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger persists in making against the officials.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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