Jose Mourinho says Gareth Southgate had no reason to substitute Jack Grealish during England’s Euro 2020 2-1 win over Denmark.
Aston Villa’s playmaker started the game on the bench but was brought on in the 69th minute with the score still level at 1-1.
Harry Kane put England in front in the first half of extra time and minutes later, Southgate replaced Grealish with Trippier in order to close out the match.
After the game, Southgate said he was keen to bring on an extra defender to counter Denmark’s threat but Mourinho believes England’s opponents were ‘exhausted physically’.
‘I didn’t like it too,’ Mourinho told talkSPORT when quizzed about Southgate’s decision to substitute Grealish.
‘But I did, not very similar, but probably even worse which was start a Champions League game – Tottenham vs Olympiacos – and after 20 minutes I had to make a change, we were losing 2-0, bringing [Eric] Dier out was something which broke my heart.
‘But I did it for the team and probably Gareth tried to explain to Grealish why he did that. If he did that, it was not with an intention to hurt Jack, I’m pretty sure of that. It was with the intention to try to help the team.
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‘But honestly I didn’t see a reason for that because England were not in trouble, England were in control, Denmark were exhausted physically, mentally.
‘I could even feel with Jack having even more space and the game totally broken I could see Jack helping England resolve the game even easier and to kill it.
‘I didn’t feel any need [for Southgate] to do that. But I am 100 per cent sure Gareth did that with the intention of thinking about the team and not hurting the player.’
