Just under a week ago on this platform, I wrote about John Cross milking Jose Mourinho’s public training mistake for all it was worth.
The Mirror journalist, who has spent most of his career doting on Arsenal, claimed that Tottenham’s players were upset with Mourinho for setting a bad example when organising a fitness session with Tanguy Ndombele, Ryan Sessegnon and Davinson Sanchez on Hadley Commin in Barnet, ignoring the government’s guidance on Covid-19 in the process.
MORE: John Cross’s Story Of Player Discontent Must Be Nonsense
And as I suspected, Cross was prattling utter drivel, as Lucas Moura has refuted his story by saying the incident wasn’t a big deal at all.
“Mourinho of course cares about our fitness,” Moura told Sky Sports. “He loves football, he loves training, so I think he wanted to see everyone and make sure everyone is taking care about our body shape.
“For sure, he’s taking care about himself as well. I don’t think it (the park session) was a big problem. He knows and he’s a very professional guy.”
It was a problem in the sense that it created more bad PR for Spurs at a time when our reputation was already in the gutter over the furloughing debacle, but I never imagined that it was a problem among the players.
This was simply Cross trying to fictionailse friction where there isn’t any.
It is being suggested Mourinho’s 1 on 1 with Ndombele was just an ostentatious stunt to try and give the impression he has tried everything with him but nothing works. Otherwise why didn’t he just issue his instructions/ advice to Ndombele over the phone or video, or if need be in the privacy of one of their gardens?