Comment | HJK’s head coach made an obvious mistake in the Roma match – did José Mourinho’s flattery affect Toni Koskela?

When the leader has enough charisma, everyone eats out of his hand. Such is one of the elite of football coaches Jose Mourinhoand when necessary, he cleverly takes advantage of people’s admiration.

I claim that he also did that before the Europa League home match against HJK, and fully consciously.

“Everything I do is a psychological game, everything I say is a psychological game. It’s all a psychological game. Only results are not a psychological game,” Mourinho said in February 2014 as Chelsea’s head coach.

It was partly a tongue-in-cheek statement, but true at the same time.

The psychological game aims to destabilize the opponent, and Mourinho is a master at that game. He will say anything to get under the opponent’s skin or fool the opponent. His statements always have a reason.

Day before the meeting between AS Roma and HJK, Mourinho sent his venom through the media.

“I am familiar with HJK. Above all, I paid attention to the coach and how he has organized the game and what kind of thoughts and ideas he has. I like it a lot,” Mourinho said at his press conference on Wednesday.

That same evening, HJK’s head coach Toni Koskela answered in his own press conference what he thought about the star coach’s praise.

“Of course it’s flattering. It’s a coaching legend,” Koskela said.

Mourinho said in an interview with Esquire magazine in 2014 that opinions, characters, personalities and emotions can be influenced in the period before matches.

“Of course I use it to influence my players and opponents and supporters. But the only game is a 90-minute match.”

Mourinho completed his psychological game by shaking hands with the entire HJK coaching staff before Thursday’s match.

How Did Mourinho’s flattery actually affect Koskela’s thoughts and actions? Of course, only Koskela himself knows that. But he made at least one clear mistake in the match.

Before that mistake, HJK’s players made a couple of crucial mistakes.

In time 11.58 a side top Arttu Hoskonen gave a rather quiet pass by the midfielder To Lucas Lingmanwho made a direct pass towards Toppari with his better left foot Miro Tenhoa.

Lingman missed his pass badly. He clearly did not hit the ball in the right way, but the ball bounced only a couple of meters forward.

Andrea Belotti caught the pass and went past Tenho. The HJK captain bluntly stopped Belotti and after the video review received a red card for his foul.

“Things happen at Fudis. Sometimes you make mistakes, and now that mistake backfired in a big way. It was a bad drip, and Miro [Tenho] suffered from it,” Lingman said after the match.

HJK did surprisingly well at the end of the opening period, undermanned. However, attacking was very difficult. Koskelaa set out to fix that problem with replacements and made a mistake at the same time.

He replaced winger Arttu Hoskonen, who had a concussion, from the field at halftime, and at the same time also the midfielder Perparim Hetemajn, who had played a very significant role in keeping the ball with his own team. Experienced Hetemaj got seven fouls on the opponent’s players in the opening period.

After the match, Koskela himself questioned the Hetemaj exchange in an interview with Viaplay.

Hetemaj should definitely have been kept on the field as long as possible despite the fact that he had received a yellow card.

AS Roma only needed a Substitute Paulo Dybala’s and just over one minute into the second period, the ball was in HJK’s goal for the first time.

After Dybala’s goal, the final result of the match was clear, and AS Roma won 3–0.

HJK’s first two matches in the Europa League have shown that HJK can compete against top teams. There’s just no room for mistakes at this level. There are still four matches left in the group to try to play so flawlessly that the matches would result in points.