Explained: Mourinho's battle with Turkish football

There are very few people in football who have seen more than Jose Mourinho.  

He has experienced life at the very top of the game for over two decades – In England, in Spain, in Italy and in Portugal – but even he is shocked by what he says he has found in Turkey.

“This is not about sports rivalry,” he says in our exclusive interview. “This is much bigger than what people can imagine. If you live here, or try to dig deep, you find unbelievable things.”

Mourinho is speaking to me from the heart, after serving a two-match ban for his well-publicised comments after the Istanbul derby. He now faces another ban from the touchline, for the comments he made to Sky Sports News last week.

Before losing to Rangers last week, his team had been playing well. Eighteen games without defeat and they’ve been closing the gap on bitter rivals Galatasaray.

But he now believes it’s a gap that can never be fully closed, and not for footballing reasons.

“We have found a good stability [on the pitch] but everybody knows in this country that, if things don’t change, it is impossible to win [the league title].

“I raise my voice in defence of my club and in the defence of Turkish football, because this is a beautiful country. But the football here has to be more than this.”

Sky Sports News has contacted the Turkish FA for a response to the claims Mourinho has made in this interview. When Sky Sports News contacted the Turkish FA last week in response to Mourinho’s original claims, they did not respond.

For raising his voice, Mourinho has been fined and banned more than once.

In November, after beating Trabzonspor 3-1 away from home, he said to one post-match interviewer: “We play against a system, and to play against a system is the most difficult thing. The system will try to close my mouth.”

Then he ended with the words that have become a catchphrase here.

“WE ARE CLEAN.”

Last week, ‘WE ARE CLEAN’ t-shirts went on sale in the Fenerbahce club shop. Mourinho gave me one, fresh off the production line, before we sat down for our chat.

He’s relaxed, despite the controversial headlines of the last two weeks, but says he has no regrets about speaking out, despite the punishments, and he will keep doing it.

“I would say that, in normal conditions, we would not be second fighting hard to be first. In normal conditions the title race would be over, but it would be over (with us winning) by a huge distance.”

And he adds with a sigh: “It’s too much. It’s simply too much.”

Mourinho’s Portuguese compatriot, Jorge Jesus, had the same feeling. “This league has no sporting reality”, he said when he was Fenerbahce head coach.

Fenerbahce officials guided me to these statistics, to support the claim.

Over the past 10 full seasons, Fenerbahce have totalled 717 points. That’s one less than Galatasaray, on 718. Fenerbahce have won NO League titles. Galatasaray have won FIVE. Besiktas have achieved 18 points fewer than Fenerbahce, but won the title THREE times.

Over the past five years, it’s a similar story, except Fenerbahce have picked up more points than Galatasaray. The title tally is Galatasaray TWO, Fenerbahce NIL.

While points totals do not necessarily mean they deserve to win a title, it does highlight why they feel disappointed.

But the alleged bias Mourinho, his club officials and club supporters perceive, is not, they claim, just anti-Fenerbahce, but pro-Galatasaray.

Many journalists feel it too, and so do other clubs.

Last month, during a game between Galatasaray and Adana Demirspor, the visiting players all walked off the pitch in protest at a soft penalty award to Galatasaray. Replays suggested that Dries Mertens may have dived. At the very least, he dramatically exaggerated any contact. Alvaro Morata scored from the spot.

Demirspor were so incensed they refused to return to the pitch, and the game was abandoned at 1-0. The Turkish Football Federation later awarded the points, and a 3-0 victory, to Galatasaray.

In a statement, Demirspor, said the decision to leave the pitch was a “reaction by our club against systematic, deliberate referee errors and injustice”.

Mourinho told me he was surprised the Demirspor team walked off but was even more shocked by the reaction of the Galatasaray players.

“Can you imagine a team abandoning a match because the referee’s favouritism of Galatasaray was too much?” he said.

“Can you visualise this in England?

“They did it because the dimension was ridiculous. But what was even more ridiculous is that the Galatasaray players stayed on the pitch celebrating victory. That was not a victory. That was a team feeling so disrespected that they had to abandon the match.

“This is what is happening here.”

He feels such a sense of injustice, that he can’t help expressing it, whatever the punishment. Again and again. After matches. Before matches. On social media.

“This is not a situation that a single club fighting (alone) can resolve. It is not going to destroy a system that is in place.”

Then he made an appeal to camera.

“This is your league. This is the league of every kid that dreams to be a football player. The league of every kid that loves his club. This is your league, and if you are happy with the status quo, then be happy. I have learned a new word (in Turkish): ‘skandal’. But in this country many people like it.”

Mourinho told me he does it to try and make a difference.

“My Instagram is a very raw Instagram. I do it myself. I do all the pictures. Sometimes I write with bad spelling but that’s the way I do it. It has around six million followers all around the world, and when I post ridiculous situations, I think people open their eyes.”

Of course, for every Fenerbahce suggestion of bias, for every Mourinho cry of foul, there are equally strong feelings from Galatasaray that it’s Fenerbahce benefiting from the Turkish football system.

And it often gets ugly.

I’ve been to Istanbul a few times now on footballing matters, and I must admit, I’ve never witnessed a club rivalry or a mutual hatred like it. It’s Glasgow magnified. It’s El Clasico on fast forward. It’s the NLD with brass knobs on.

That is why Galatasaray took the most extreme exception possible to Mourinho’s ‘jumping’ metaphor. That is why Mourinho is counter-suing.

It’s tit for tat.

The mentality is: ‘You attack our manager, and we’ll attack yours’. The club war in Istanbul takes no prisoners.

In the end of course, it’s impossible to unequivocally prove claims of bias towards either club, or any club. However, the TFF (Turkish Football Federation) does seem to have accepted that the quality of refereeing in the country isn’t all it could be. That’s why foreign referees have been drafted in to officiate some games for the rest of this season.

The man in the middle for the now infamous Istanbul derby last month was Slavko Vincic. He’s so highly rated by UEFA that he was put in charge of last season’s Champions League final at Wembley.

Mourinho rates him too.

He went down the tunnel after the match to congratulate him on his performance, even though he disallowed a goal that would have given Fenerbahce all three points. At the same time he criticised the Turkish fourth official.

Fenerbahce are keen to point out that Mourinho was never banned or fined for racism. He was, they say, charged with making an “insult” but eventually punished for “unsportsmanlike conduct”.

Mourinho has no regrets. For now, at least, he’s doing what he believes is right for Fenerbahce. It’s not about him. It’s about his club.

“I don’t think about myself. I won eight championships. If it goes to nine, of course nine is better than eight, but I think about the club and not about myself.

“I think about the 35 million fans that Fenerbahce has in Turkey and I think about the reasons why Fenerbahce never wins a title for so many years.

“Trying to win the title here means more for the club and the fans than for myself. I work for them.”

And, in closing, he laughs and smiles when he says: “I am in a phase of my career where my ego is diminished and the sense of belonging, the sense of doing something for others, gets bigger.

“So, if I can help this club to do something that can change the direction of Turkish football, that would be a fantastic feeling for me.”