Jose Mourinho has delivered a scathing verdict on Gareth Southgate ’s decision to sub Jack Grealish off in extra-time of England’s win over Denmark.
The Three Lions won 2-1 at Wembley on Wednesday night thanks to an own goal from Simon Kjaer and an extra-time winner from Harry Kane.
With the game level heading into the final 20 minutes of normal time, England boss Southgate opted to bring on Grealish in place of Arsenal star Bukayo Saka, to the delight of many fans.
Despite the input of Grealish though, the Three Lions were still unable to find a way past Kasper Schmeichel before the 90 minutes were up.
That sent the game into extra-time and with two minutes to go before half-time, Raheem Sterling was brought down inside the box.
Kane stepped up but saw his spot-kick saved, before tucking away the rebound to score what would be the winner.
At the half-time whistle, Southgate opted to give his side more protection at the back and controversially brought off Grealish in favour of right-back Kieran Trippier.
That saw England change to a 3-4-3 system, with Grealish’s fellow substitute Phil Foden up front alongside Kane and Sterling.
Was Gareth Southgate right to take off Jack Grealish against Denmark? Comment below.
Mourinho did not agree with the decision, but admitted that he had done the same thing when in charge of Tottenham.
“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.”
England saw out the game, but Mourinho felt they could have done so more comfortably had Grealish stayed on the pitch.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Following the game, Southgate attempted to explain his snubbing of Grealish and insisted the Aston Villa star was not concerned about being brought off so soon after coming on.
“He’s fine – he understood, he was terrific when he came on he gave us momentum,” the England boss said.
“But we know when they’ve gone behind in games they’ve thrown four men up front so we needed to get an extra defender on just to make sure we were more solid.
“I wanted to keep Raheem’s [Sterling] speed on so it meant taking one of the two boys off who had just come on.”
