@football.scope3: 🚨 Jose Mourinho on what he told Arda Guler while embracing him during his substitution: “People saw me speaking to Arda when he came off. I was telling him something very important, something I remember discussing with Mesut Ozil when we worked together here. I told him, ‘Arda, you have to understand something. There are very good footballers, and then there are footballers who reach a level where a manager simply cannot ignore them. It doesn’t matter who is sitting on the bench. You make yourself impossible to leave out.’ Because that’s what I want him to understand. Look at the game he played today. People know Arda as an attacking player. They want to see him close to the penalty area, creating chances, scoring beautiful goals. I understand that. But I asked him to play deeper, to take responsibility for our midfield, and what did he do? He played like somebody who had been doing that job for ten years. He was organising players, asking for the ball, deciding when we should attack and when we should slow things down. And then he still found a way to score that goal. I remember turning to my assistant during the match and saying, ‘Look at him. He’s playing a different position, but he’s still finding a way to be the most influential player on the pitch.’ That’s a fantastic quality. Some players are very good when everything is arranged for them. You put them in their favourite position, give them the freedom they want, and they can be excellent. But change one or two things and suddenly you don’t recognise the same player. Arda doesn’t approach football like that. He wants to play. You ask him to create chances, he creates them. You ask him to help control the midfield, he takes responsibility. You ask him to work without the ball, he works. And I think this is one of the reasons the supporters love him so much. Real Madrid supporters have watched some of the greatest footballers in history. You cannot impress them only because you have a beautiful left foot. They’ve seen beautiful left feet before. They want to see what you do for the shirt. They want to see whether you take responsibility when the match becomes difficult. Whether you’re prepared to work for your teammates. Whether you still want the ball when everybody else is looking for somewhere to hide. Arda has that personality. Of course, he is still young. There are things I correct him about. Sometimes I tell him, ‘Arda, you don’t need to play the difficult pass every time. Sometimes the simple pass is the intelligent one.’ And he listens. That’s important. You don’t teach a player to see football the way Arda sees it. You can improve his decisions, you can improve his positioning, but that natural understanding is something he already has. When I embraced him, I told him to remember this performance. Not only the goal. The entire performance. Because when his career is finished, I want him to look back and know that he didn’t waste what he was given. I worked with Ozil here. I know what an extraordinary football brain looks like. I’m not asking Arda to become Mesut. I’m asking him to understand that he has the opportunity to reach that level of influence in his own way. And I told him, ‘Keep working like this. Keep accepting responsibility. One day, people won’t be discussing where you should play. They’ll be discussing how to build a team that gets the best out of you.’ That’s the level he should be aiming for. He doesn’t need me to promise him anything. He needs to keep giving me reasons to select him. Today, he gave me quite a few.”

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Monday 19 October 2026 05:23:17 GMT