Sympathy from Twitterati? No way, Jose!

John Murray

The dismissal of Jose Mourinho as manager of Chelsea last Wednesday proved to be not only one of the stories of the 2015/16 football season so far, but also spawned one of the biggest Twitter reactions of the year.

A terrible first half of the season has caused the Premier League Champions to slump to being in the thick of a relegation battle, and manager Mourinho to go from penning a four-year contract in the summer to being out of a job by the end of 2015. Within an hour of the Portuguese’s sacking, more than 200,000 tweets had appeared on the subject, and clever clogs social media users were quick to stick the knife in on the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’.

Bookmaker and perennial windup merchant Paddy Power was one of the quickest on the act, tweeting a cobbled together baffled response from Mourinho.

Jose Mourinho kicking up a fuss after being sacked… https://t.co/KHHqS74Zqj

— Paddy Power (@paddypower) December 17, 2015

It was fairly predictable that the current popularity of BBC’s The Apprentice would lead to some degree of mickey-taking at Mourinho’s expense, but full marks to Bleacher Report UK for the effort put into this mashup.

Ranking: The 5 most memorable Jose Mourinho meltdowns during the 2015/16 Chelsea season https://t.co/Fedt8BAYhC https://t.co/lDOePQ1sKY

— B/R Football (@brfootball) December 17, 2015

Lastly, Mourinho’s fondness for “parking the bus” (a metaphor for his tactic of resolutely defending and showing little attacking threat to grind out a result) was picked up on by BBC Sport parody account, BBC Sporf.

https://twitter.com/BBCSporf/status/677517212643631104?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

With the Premier League having been full of shocks this season, perhaps the ultimate irony is that the man sacked as Chelsea boss to make way for Mourinho 11 years ago, Claudio Ranieri, is currently leading Leicester City to a title challenge.

No doubt 2016 will have plenty more in store for football-mad social media addicts.

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John Murray

Content Editor at Engage Web

John studied English with Creative Writing at university and went on to write for newspapers in both West Yorkshire and Chester. A published poet, short story writer and music blogger with a flair for quick pun-delivery, John is a genuine word nerd and a member of a Scrabble club, so it was only natural that he went on to work in a wordy position.

Sympathy from Twitterati? No way, Jose!