Nobody in the game has more interesting examples to put forward than Jose Mourinho, that is for certain and the most recent example that the Man U coach has used to explain his point on Rooney controversy is as interesting as ever.


Mourinho reckons when a kid has a pencil of his own, he looks after it alright, but, when he doesn’t have a pencil of his own and his friend gives him a pencil for a couple of days or whatever time, then he has to be even more responsible towards it than he would have been towards his own pencil because it’s not his object, it has been given to him.

By the example of pencil, what Mourinho tried to say was that the players are actually the assets of the club while a season is on and if during that time, a club is allowing a player to join his national team, it is in a way lending the player to his national team. So, it becomes the responsibility of the coaching staff of the national team that nothing controversial happens with the player.

As per Mourinho, if he finds himself in charge of a national team tomorrow, he will certainly see players as if he has borrowed them from somewhere and he will ensure everything remains well with them till the point they go to where they had been borrowed from, that is to their clubs.

It was definitely a dig at Gareth Southgate, who, according to Mourinho, should not have allowed his players a night out. If he hadn’t, there was no way the Rooney controversy had broken out. The Portuguese also indicated that if media had gone after other England players, they would also have been found in similar condition that night as Rooney or even worse, maybe not in a marriage function, but, somewhere else.