Chelsea FC manager Jose Mourinho seems to be finally waving the white flag in his battle against the FA, as he has decided not to appeal against the stadium ban that has been imposed on him for the away match at Stoke City, on Saturday.
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Mourinho has been penalised by the FA for his comments on the referees, after Chelsea FC’s 2-1 loss to West Ham United at home, last month.
The stadium ban dictates that Mourinho would have to stay out of the Britannia Stadium during the match between Stoke City and Chelsea FC. Mourinho seems to have accepted the punishment and says that he no longer wishes to wage his battle against the FA.
“I have decided to give up,” Mourinho was quoted as saying by BBC. “It is stupid to fight a fight you know you are going to lose.”
Asked about his plans for the game, the Portuguese manager said that he is probably not even going to watch the match.
“You can imagine that it’s not easy. You can imagine how I feel,” he said. “I have no plans to watch. Maybe I sit in the street corner with my iPad. Maybe I don’t even watch the game. Maybe, live scores? Results?”
Is Mourinho implying that the FA is trivialising the stadium bans?
While he did say that he does not want to go toe-to-toe with the FA, Mourinho being Mourinho, seemed to have taken a cheeky dig at England’s apex governing body for football.
“I can imagine that in the future we are going to have lots of managers with stadium bans, because the stadium bans should be related to something really serious,” he said.
This comment by the Chelsea FC boss seems to be suggesting that we could be seeing many more stadium bans for the manager in the future. It remains to be seen if the manager is called into question for his eccentric behaviour in the future and whether the FA is going to take further steps against him.