Mourinho: Wonderful if two English clubs make Europa League final

Jose Mourinho thinks it would be “wonderful” if Tottenham were able to play a part in an all-English Europa League final.

Reacting to the draw for the last 16 on Friday, which saw Spurs paired with Dinamo Zagreb, Mourinho accepted there were some positives.

Arsenal and Manchester United are also in the draw and will face Olympiacos and Milan respectively, with a realistic chance of three English sides making it into the quarter-finals.

While he did not want to get carried away, Mourinho did discuss the prospect of facing the other Premier League sides later in the tournament after Spurs defeated Wolfsberger 8-1 on aggregate to book their Dinamo tie.

“When you are in this competition and you get to this stage you don’t get easy clubs,” said Mourinho.

“If you want to win it, sooner or later you have to play against the best clubs or the ones who go through the different stages. So, the objective now is to win against Dinamo.

“Then if later Arsenal and Manchester United are in the competition, we have always to face them.

“It happened in the Champions League final, two English clubs, happened in the Europa League with Arsenal and Chelsea too.

“It’s something that can happen and if it does, wonderful for us if we are one of the two teams. And [it would be] wonderful for English football to have two teams in the final.

“But in this moment,16 teams, everybody wants the same so it’s very premature to think about it.”

 

— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) February 26, 2021

While Dinamo Zagreb are top of the Croatian league, other possible opponents for Spurs included Milan, Roma, Ajax and Villarreal.

Mourinho, who has won the Europa League twice in spells at Porto and United, added: “Good stadium, I believe we are going to play there.

“Not a very difficult flight, not too far, so I feel very positive things, but the most important thing is that we get to the quarter-finals.

“Dinamo, they beat Krasnodar twice. Krasnodar is a Russian team and it’s never easy to play them. 

“In the group stage, of course they won it, not only against Wolfsberger, but Feyenoord and CSKA Moscow. They are every season in European competitions.

“I played against them with Real Madrid in the Champions League. Croatian football is Croatian football, lots of talent. It’s a football country.” 

Prior to the beginning of that tie on March 11, Mourinho is tasked with turning around Tottenham’s poor Premier League form, starting with Sunday’s home match against Burnley.

Spurs have lost five of their past six league matches, as many as they had in their previous 28, leaving them ninth in the table.