is looking on the bright side of an extremely early exit from the Champions League for Fenerbahce, saying they had no chance of winning the competition anyway but they could do very well in the Europa League.
It was a heartbreaking evening for the Turkish club as a Jonathan David penalty in extra-time gave Lille a 1-1 draw on the night and a 3-2 victory on aggregate in the third qualifying round of the Champions League.
Mourinho’s men will now head to the Europa League instead of the top table of European football, but he reckons that this is no bad thing.
The Portuguese was in charge of Roma in a Europa League final just last year – a final Roma actually lost to Sevilla on penalties – but he hinted that he could do the same with Fenerbahce this time around.
‘We would never have won the . We are going to the ,’ he said, via ‘I say if in the Europa League…I don’t want to continue this sentence. If you are curious about the rest of the sentence I started with, you can watch the Europa League final in the 2022/23 season.’
Mourinho tried not to be drawn on the late penalty, given for handball against Jayden Oosterwolde, but made his feelings clear.
‘It’s better if I don’t talk about the penalty,’ he said. ‘Because looking at other things that have happened to me recently, only the referee knows why it was a penalty, and the VAR knows. I’m proud of my team.
‘I am an honest person. I told my players that I was proud of them, they did everything to win. We adapted to many conditions during the match, two balls hit the post, we had many opportunities. One team deserved to win but the other team advanced.’
Mourinho took charge of his first Turkish Super Lig game on Saturday, with Edin Dzeko scoring the only goal in a 1-0 win over Adana Demirspor.
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