You can say what you want about Jose Mourinho — we certainly have. He’s irascible and temperamental. His stints at various clubs throughout his career have followed a pretty consistent three-year cycle. He recently crashed out at Manchester United after most of his players ended up hating him, and that was pretty hilarious. It’s fun seeing him suffer sometimes, if only because he’s hit the high notes so dang often.

But the Special One is also a very good manager and has been around the block quite a few times. So it’s interesting to hear Mou talk about the perspective of being a manager, as he did to beIN Sports recently.

“Sometimes people don’t know how we feel. They don’t know how it matters for us. Sometimes people don’t know. Sometimes, the football fans think they care more than us. Sometimes they think that it is just you win a big match you enjoy, you lose a game you are sad but tomorrow is another day. Sometimes they don’t know what it is like behind the scenes. We are normally a very lonely person in the sense that football consumes a lot and I think this is a manifestation of all of that together. ”[Pochettino] thinks as a fan, he thinks as a kid dreaming with this as a player, and dreaming of these moments, thinking about the family and the people who helped him get there, and I think it is very normal that he is crying, and I think it is a very beautiful way to show the world as managers, or players, it means much more than the ordinary fan, in defeat and in victory too.”

Whoa, hold up even football managers have feelings? I KNOW, RIGHT?

But Mourinho also gave some pretty solid advice to Mauricio Pochettino, the manager that Mou’s past employers at one time wanted to hire to replace him, after hearing Poch’s recent comments about leaving Spurs if they win the Champions League.

“I think he’s saying that he goes home, which is what we all do after matches, but I think he’s probably having a similar feeling that I had with Porto, when in an unexpected way you do something incredible that’s almost impossible to repeat. When you are in the moment of your career when you have desire to do other things, maybe he’s saying that being European champion with Spurs, he goes home and waits for a different project. I don’t know. “I would tell him not to do it because it’s something that I regret, that I never played in the Club World Cup because I left Porto and Inter when I felt it was finished. ”There can be lots of work to do at a club and many other things to play for, stay with the group of players that you love, that you are loved with a club, where you are given the best conditions to do it, the best support possible. I don’t think he has to leave if he wins the Champions League.”

Now, most of us here at Carty Free are of the opinion that Poch was trolling the media with those comments. Sure, there’s probably a nugget of truth in there — especially when he doubled down with a link after the Ajax win, saying that he “might leave if we lose, too” — but I think it has more to do with, as he put it, closing a chapter and starting a new one. He’s used that verbage a lot. And frankly, if Poch can haul this tired-ass injury decimated squad to a Champions League title, I won’t even be mad if he DOES leave. He’ll have earned it.

But back to Mourinho: this is good advice, and remarkably introspective from a manager who loves to play mind games. But on the other hand, he did have this to say after Liverpool’s comeback against Barcelona on Tuesday:

“Everything I think it is all is about Jurgen’s mentality. I just hope that Jurgen wins the Champions League finally because he lost already two Champions League finals and also a Europa League final. I think he deserves to make it happen because the work he does is fantastic.”

Yeah. OK, never mind Mou.