José Mourinho causes a stir in Istanbul: Affentheater about allegations of racism and criticism of referees

José Mourinho briefly made himself a monkey as a coach of Fenerbahce Istanbul on Monday evening. In the follow -up of the league game at the city rival Galatasaray, in which there was much more going on before and after the match than with the thread 0-0 on the square, he imitated the movements of gorillas with arms raised. With this gesture, Mourinho wanted to illustrate how the Galatasaray players had behaved in the first minute. These jumped around “like monkeys” to get a yellow card for the young Fenerbahce defender Yusuf Akcicek, he found. However, because the referee in this scene had dispensed with a warning, Mourinho Blumig praised that he survived in the “jungle”. By this, the Portuguese meant the naturally varied background noise in the Ali-Sami-Yen Stadium of Galatasaray.

Shortly thereafter, Mourinho may have felt that he had loved him. In a media declaration, Galatasaray threatened to initiate criminal proceedings “for racist statements” and to present UEFA and FIFA with formal complaints to the football associations. Because Mourinho’s choice of words was “escalated to a clearly inhumane rhetoric beyond” mere immoral remarks, “wrote the club. The opposing trainer was also able to speak “again and again abruptly about the Turkish people”. The statement provided Galatasaray with a “Saynotoracism” hay day and a corresponding picture.

Fenerbahce rejected the allegations on Thursday. The names could “never be associated with racism” that they were “completely out of context and deliberately distorted”. Fenerbahce also announced legal steps.

The trigger for the theater should be Mourinho’s incessant criticism of the Turkish referee guild and the football structures in the country. There have been constant events since his obligation in the summer of 2024. In September, he placed a laptop on the edge of the field in front of a TV camera for his team in September due to an unexpected goal for his team. There was a statue of the corresponding scene on the ball levy. Mourinho was warned for the campaign. Shortly thereafter, he attacked the Atilla Karaoglan video referee – he directed the first round of Fenerbahce against Galatasaray (1: 3) – for two penalty decisions. Mourinho scolded Karaoglan anymore Karaoglan.

In this context, the 62-year-old questioned the integrity of the Turkish league. His club fights a system that is gray and dark and smell poorly. He received a game lock for these admissions and had to pay a fine of 18,000 euros. Nevertheless, Mourinho followed: When he recently wanted to have recognized a “scandal” when he won his selection due to a referee’s performance controversial. A single fighter – meant his club Fenerbahce was obvious – could not destroy an “extremely strong and functioning system”. According to his opinion, his team would have to lead the Turkish Süper Lig with “nine points”- instead, after the youngest draw, she was more than six points behind the ore and city rivals in the derby.

The Turkish association had particularly hired a foreign referee for the city derby

With his tirades, which draw more attention than usual to Turkish football, Mourinho had recently deflected well -calculated from the losses of its eleven points and increased the pressure on the Turkish Football Association. In any case, he seemed to give in to him in that he committed a foreign referee for the first time for the duel with Galatasaray. The choice fell on the Slovenian Slavko Vincic, which, at least with regard to nationality, has no points of contact with both clubs: there is no Slovenian in terms of both Fenerbahce and Galatasaray.

In order to nominate Vincic, against which Galatasaray protested in vain in front of the arbitration tribunal, the association announced that they wanted to “avoid further controversy”. In Turkish football scandal cutting, there is at least no lack of accusations of corruption, play manipulation and conspiracy theories. Mourinho obviously tries to use this for his purposes: he welcomed the association’s measure as an important step for the credibility of the league – and Hernach described Hernach to have thanked Vincic in the cabin. He told the fourth official from Turkey that with him as a referee the game would have become a “disaster”.

So far, the liaison of Fenerbahce Istanbul and José Mourinho has been particularly suitable because both sides often feel misunderstood by the world. Since 2014, the club from the Asian bank of the Bosphorus has been waiting for the Turkish championship. Mourinho, on the other hand, wants to refute the critics who keep him out of time. Only the championship title counts for both sides – but Fenerbahce should have won.