Ninguneo, sarcasm, irony and provocation: the clash between Pellegrini and Mourinho will mark the duel between Betis and Roma for the Europa League

UEFA have made the draw for the next edition of the Europa League. One of the agreements draws attention to the Old Continent. The Betis and Roma share Group C of the competition a, which complete the Ludogorets and the HJK Helsinki. The Spaniards and the Italians do not host any of the most traditional clashes in European football, far from it. However, there is an element that adds enough attractiveness to the commitments that will animate the two teams: the reunion between Manuel Pellegrini and José Mourinho.

The careers of the two coaches are twinned by a common element: Real Madrid. In the merengue club, the Portuguese had much more success than the Chilean, since he added three titles: the championship, the Copa del Rey and the local Super Cup, in the 2011-12 season. With him, the White House succeeded in breaking the hegemony of Barcelona . Mou was the replacement for the engineer, who left the world’s leading club leaving good numbers, but no title and with papers like elimination against Alcorcón, in the Copa del Rey, in tow. President Florentino Pérez did not shake his hand to impeach him. Over time, in any case, the Chilean will show his value in the different professional challenges he will face. . However, there was a deep distance between the two.

Mourinho was, during this singular argument, the provocateur. You have to go back to when he grabbed the white bench and shot straight at the Engineer. “If Madrid expels me, I won’t coach Malaga. I will go to a big club in England or Italy, not Malaga “, he launched, compared to the new destiny that had taken the career of the Chilean coach.

Pellegrini is not far away and answers him. “Whoever says he won’t come to Malaga is because he hasn’t been there,” he replied. “I tried to do the best campaign… It hurts a lot, but it was Real Madrid’s best ever campaign in terms of points “, he reinforced, trying to validate his performance. Mou, once again, launched against him. “He only told part of the truth. But he lost in the first round of the Copa del Rey (against Alcorcón) and in the knockout stages of the Champions League. He was also second and the second is the first of the last” he insisted.

The round trips would not stop there. “It can’t be a team chasing the ball no matter how much they win. Not with players of this category and this name, players who can put on a show for their people for 90 minutes… I don’t like result-oriented technicians asked Pellegrini, in a direct allusion to Mourinho’s Real Madrid.

The relationship between the two has not changed over time. Even the change of scenery that led to the two moving through the Premier League didn’t generate any closeness. In fact, the incident that happened after a match between Manchester City and Chelsea is widely remembered. The first team was led by the Chilean. The match was won by the Blues, a feat celebrated effusively by Mourinho. Pellegrini saw it as yet another provocation in the tense history of disagreements between the two and ruled out the possibility of saying goodbye to his rival, a common ritual among English competition strategists, regardless of the outcome.

For Mourinho, the snub has become one more element in his favor. “It’s normal that he doesn’t shake my hand when you lose at the last moment “, he launched. The Engineer explained that he had not wanted to say goodbye to the Portuguese strategist. Before the rematch, Mou detonated another bomb, blaming the refereeing favoritism in favor of City . “The referees try to do their best and sometimes they make mistakes and normally during the season the mistakes are shared between the teams. In the case of City, they have everything in their favor “, he raised.

Time has lessened the virulence. Pellegrini said he has a good relationship with several coaches and includes Mourinho in that reasoning. . He even recalled that on one occasion they met at an airport and greeted each other with a hug, which shows the improvement in the relationship between the two.

Today, in fact, after learning the distribution of the teams in the Europa League, the Portuguese praised the Chilean, while attributing to him the responsibility of being the protagonist of the group, with his eleventh. “Teams like Betis have a responsibility to win. They won the Copa del Rey, they have a top coach and a team that plays great football. Last year they finished fifth, it’s a top team “, he exposed.

“I played against Ludogorets there, it’s not an easy match, it’s a team that always wins the championship in Bulgaria. I don’t know the other rival, but the clubs in northern Europe have evolved a lot. After 200 benches in Europe, this will be the first time I play in Finland “, he analyzed about the other rivals.