Manu Carreño has aimed one of the fiercest broadsides yet at Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho since the Portuguese returned to the spotlight, accusing him of using referees as a scapegoat to mask his side's technical failings. The famous Spanish broadcaster put it bluntly: "Your team is not playing real football, and that is not the referees' fault."
Speaking on "Cadena SER", Carreño tore into Mourinho's addiction to complaining about officials. That tune, he argued, has become a repetitive and tedious theme across the coach's entire career, with various teams and in various competitions, and it explains nothing about the real problems his sides suffer on the pitch.
The whistle complex, Carreño stressed, has nothing to do with Real Madrid specifically. It is a trait that has followed Mourinho wherever he has gone. "Mourinho is a person who looks at referees as being against him personally, not against Real Madrid," he said. "He thought they were against him when he was at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan."
Every stop brought the same stance, according to the Spanish journalist, whether in the Premier League, in Italy, and even in his recent spells in Turkey and Portugal.
Mockery followed. "It is worth reviewing the definition of a referee," Carreño said. "The referee is a sporting judge, and in football, he always appears biased in favour of the teams Mourinho coaches. That is the definition of a referee, in short."
Chelsea, Manchester United, Inter Milan, Roma, Fenerbahce. Carreño ran through the long record of disputes and stressed that at every club, Mourinho reached for the same weapon: the argument that referees had wronged him.
The latest chapter came after Benfica's Champions League meeting with Real Madrid, when Mourinho claimed some Madrid players enjoy special protection from yellow cards.
Carreño quoted the controversial line: "I was sent off because I said something very clear. The referee had a piece of paper on which it was written: 'Tchouameni, Carreras and Huijsen do not deserve a yellow card'."
Such statements, in Carreño's view, amount to nothing more than a transparent strategy to divert attention from the heart of the problem and to publicly cast doubt on the integrity of referees.
He finished by turning to Real Madrid's performance on the pitch, warning that the refereeing row threatens to drown out the real debate about the team.
"The question is whether the fans and the players will believe this narrative from Mourinho all season long," he said. "Because the team still is not producing any kind of football. And I do not think that is the referees' fault."
Two files need separating, Carreño argued. One is the current refereeing tension around Real Madrid, lit by the Negreira case. The other is a technical debate nobody can ignore about a team that is not playing real football.
"All of this carries a risk, or perhaps it is a deliberate strategy, to shift the focus away from the team's performance and towards the match itself," he warned, stressing that the complaints are built into Mourinho's footballing personality and will not change with his return to Real Madrid.