London, April 19 (IANS): Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho was sacked on Monday less than a week before he was due to lead the club in the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City.
“The club can today announce that Jose Mourinho and his coaching staff Joao Sacramento, Nuno Santos, Carlos Lalin and Giovanni Cerra have been relieved of their duties,” a statement on the Spurs website said, reports Xinhua.
Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, said, “Jose and his coaching staff have been with us through some of our most challenging times as a club. Jose is a true professional who showed enormous resilience during the pandemic. On a personal level, I have enjoyed working with him and regret that things have not worked out as we both had envisaged. He will always be welcome here and we should like to thank him and his coaching staff for their contribution.”
Mourinho leaves with Tottenham seventh in the Premier League table with 50 points from 32 games and struggling to qualify for a place in Europe next season.
The former Porto, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Manchester United coach moved to north London in November 2019 after Mauricio Pochettino was sacked and had a contract until the end of the 2022-2023 season.
In his first season, Mourinho lifted Tottenham from 14th in the Premier League to a sixth-place finish, but after a positive start to the current campaign, they have fallen away badly and once again his tenure has been tainted by stories of bad relationships with some players.
Last week, Manchester United’s Paul Pogba commented that Mourinho would “go against” individual players.
“Once I had a great relationship with Mourinho, everybody saw that, and the next day you don’t know what happened. That’s the strange thing I had with Mourinho and I cannot explain to you,” he said.
Former player Ryan Mason is now expected to be named as caretaker manager at Tottenham until the end of the current season.
