The Portuguese coach, who once declared himself to be “the Special One,” was fined and suspended earlier in the season for a tirade against local match officials and the league.
Turkish football club Galatasaray announced it would launch “criminal proceedings” against Jose Mourinho on Monday, accusing the manager of rival Istanbul club Fenerbahçe of making “racist comments” after a Turkish league game in which the clubs drew 0-0.
Galatasaray hit out at Mourinho after the Portuguese coach made comments about Turkish referees and the Galatasaray bench during a post-match interview on Monday.
During a press conference, 62-year-old Mourinho said he welcomed the decision to bring in a foreign referee for the game and also praised referee Slavko Vinčić of Slovenia for a “top performance”.
Mourinho claimed he’d gone to see Vinčić to thank him following the game, but when he saw the fourth official — a Turkish referee — he told him: “If you (were) the referee (it) would be a disaster.”
When he was asked about a challenge early in the match, Mourinho commented that a Turkish referee would have reacted with a yellow card “after the big dive and their bench jumping around like monkeys.”
Galatasaray stated it would also lodge a complaint with football governing bodies FIFA and UEFA, accusing Mourinho of persistently issuing “derogatory statements directed towards the Turkish people.”
Fenerbahçe has rejected the claims, saying Mourinho’s remarks had nothing to do with racism and were “deliberately taken entirely out of context and distorted in a misleading manner.”
Fenerbahçe said in a post on X that it was clear Mourinho “solely intended to describe the excessive reaction of the opposing team’s technical staff to the referee’s decisions during the match. These remarks cannot, under any circumstances, be associated with racism.”
The club said it was planning to take a legal action “against this baseless accusation.”
Mourinho was fined and suspended earlier in the season for a tirade against local match officials and the league. He moved to Turkey from the Italian capital’s club Roma last year, after stints at high-profile clubs including Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Inter Milan.
In November, the outspoken Mourinho was banned for a game and fined following his diatribe about Turkish football, when he said he was fighting “the system” and suggested officials are biased against his team.
Mourinho has led Fenerbahçe to a Europa League round-of-16 contest against Glasgow Rangers next month.
