Jose Mourinho has criticised Gareth Southgate over his handling of Jack Grealish during England’s Euro 2020 semi-final win over Denmark.
The Three Lions progressed to Sunday’s Wembley final in controversial circumstances, scoring a harshly-awarded penalty in extra time after Raheem Sterling went down with little contact.
During the game, Southgate brought Aston Villa star Grealish off the bench in a bid to increase creativity with the score locked at 1-1, but after England had taken the lead, he brought him off again.
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The move was a bid to sure up his side in order to see out the 2-1 lead, but it’s unlikely to have gone down well with Grealish given substituting a substitute seen as the ultimate insult in football.
And while he understands difficult decisions have to be made at times, Roma boss Mourinho was not satisfied with Southgate’s decision-making over Grealish on this occasion.
“I didn’t like it. But I did not similar but even worse,” he told talkSPORT.
“Which was recently start a game, Champions League, Tottenham Olympiakos and after 20 minutes I had to make a change.
“We were losing 2-0, and I brought Dier out. That broke my heart but I did it for the team. Probably Gareth tried to explain to Grealish why he did that.”
“It was not done with the intention to hurt Jack. It was with the intention of trying to help the team. But I did not see a reason for it. England were not in trouble, England were in control.
“Denmark were exhausted, physically, mentally. I could even feel with Jack having more space and the game totally broken, I could even see Jack helping to resolve the game even easier and to kill it.
“So I did not see any reason to do that, but I am sure Gareth did it with the intention of helping the team and not of hurting the player.”