Mourinho fires back at Fermín López: "Other things tire us out, and they keep happening"

Fermín López dropped a line that has not gone down well at Valdebebas, saying he's "tired" of hearing Real Madrid's complaints about referees. José Mourinho, who rarely lets comments like that slide, fired back without raising his voice much, but made his point clear at the press conference ahead of Sunday's Clasico.

"Other things tire us out, and they keep happening..." the Portuguese coach replied when told what the Barcelona midfielder had said. A short, direct answer, with no further elaboration, but enough to show the subject wasn't lost on him.

Beyond that exchange, Mourinho stayed tight lipped about anything related to his starting eleven. Asked about his plans for the match, his response was blunt: "I'm not going to answer that... let's move to another question. Plans, who's going to play, the setup... I won't answer that".

A team "far from being a finished product"

He opened up a bit more when discussing where his team stands right now. The coach admitted that a week ago, many people thought Barcelona would thrash Real Madrid, and he's not bothered if that idea sticks around. He's equally unbothered by praise for the opponent: "Barcelona getting praised doesn't affect me, it has nothing to do with me. To be honest, there are moments that deserve praise because they do very good things," he acknowledged.

Regarding his own team, he asked for patience and context. As he explained it, Real Madrid gets viewed "as a finished product," something that's very hard to sustain in soccer when in reality the process has barely begun.

"We're far from being a finished product, this is an early stage, we're at a point where the coach is still learning, analyzing, mapping out directions, and the players are still getting to know the coach... Comparing a team in this state to another that's been together for years doesn't seem fair to me"José Mourinho

The coach pointed out that he's only been on the job for three months, with a preseason in which players trickled in gradually week by week, plus an international break in the middle that didn't exactly help in settling ideas either.

The referee and Lamine Yamal under the microscope

Asked about Munuera Montero, the referee assigned to the Clasico, Mourinho said the question caught him "a little off guard" and insisted that the referee's name never bothers him. What does raise questions for him is something else: "I start from the principle that the referee is good, what bothers me is that rules get broken and according to internal information, it's still not known. Three weeks ago one name came out, now another, but nobody internally has told me 'not that referee'."

To wrap up, the Portuguese coach noted that under his watch Real Madrid wins titles, and he downplayed the prospect of facing Lamine Yamal. "They're all good, it's the same as at Madrid. He's a great player, and great players deserve respect. Respecting someone is one thing, changing your plans, your setup and forgetting your identity is another. We won't do that, not for him or against anyone else with his level of quality," he said, making clear the plan for the Clasico won't revolve around a single name.