Does Shouting at Players Really Work?

By: Daryl | January 22nd, 2009

Word from Italian paper La Repubblica is that Jose Mourinho gave his Inter players quite an earful after they the 3-1 loss to Atalanta last weekend, telling the players that their three recent Scudettos (Scudetti?) were basically worthless.

Here’s the translated version of what the Portuguezer [allegedly] said in the dressing room:

“You won a Scudetto in the court, the second because there was no competition and the third was won at the last minute. You are all a pile of s**t.”

He then ranted a bit more and – I love this little detail – threw his notebook in the bin.

Bit harsh maybe? And can’t imagine club ~~sugarpoppa~~ owner Massimo Moratti is happy with having his long-awaited Scudettos (again, Scudetti?) dismissed by Mourinho.

Harry Redknapp hasn’t been shy about criticizing his Spurs squad recently either. After making plenty of positive noises when he first took over, here’s Redknapp’s current assessment of his Spurs team:

“This is a football club that has been put together by I don’t know who, and I don’t know how. It’s a mishmash of players with people playing where they want to play. It’s scary. It’s a challenge and it can’t get any worse.”

Harry also reacted to Darren Bent’s sitter miss against Portsmouth on Sunday with “”My missus could have scored that” followed by dropping Bent for last night’s lucky escape Carling Cup semi-final defeat to Burnley.

I’ve got some experience of this myself. My high school manager once told our entire team (of 14 year olds) that we were “spineless bags of crap”. And I was on the bench, which I guess made me worse than a spineless bag of crap. But we won the league and the county cup that year, so maybe it worked.

My gut feeling is that Mourinho’s outburst will have the desired effect, because it’s clearly designed to deflate the egos of the Inter squad and stop them thinking the Scudetto is easy pickings. It’s already produced a (somewhat controversial) win over Roma in last night’s Coppa Italia.

But Harry Redknapp has a squad that’s already low on confidence, a situation he may have just made worse. Time will tell.

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