Jose Mourinho prints out ‘red card’ incidents after Madrid derby loss

The 63-year-old arrived with screenshots of two decisions he thought merited red cards – a clash between Cristian Romero and Jude Bellingham, and a challenge from Lee Kang-in on Federico Valverde.

Mourinho believes Atletico should have been reduced to nine players before Dean Huijsen was sent off for Los Blancos five minutes after the interval for bringing down Giuliano Simeone, resulting in a spot kick which Alejandro Grimaldo put away.

Jonathan David added a second shortly after and Antonio Rudiger’s late goal was nothing but a consolation as Real Madrid suffered their second defeat of the campaign.

“We can skip the press conference because the story of the match is right here,” Mourinho said as he held up a piece of A4 paper showing the two incidents.

“Those were two clear red cards. Given the difficulties we faced afterwards playing 11 against 10, we can only imagine what 50 minutes of 11 against nine would have been like.

“So I’ll just have to limit myself to hugging my players, who gave it their all and played a first half, showed great class and character, setting us up perfectly to win the second half.

“They’ve put a referee, aged 41, with no international experience – it’s certainly not because he’s a great referee.

“Then the poor chap has come ‌here and hasn’t been able to cope with the pressure – and it really is intense pressure. I call it ’80s-style pressure’ here in this stadium, which you hardly ever see these days.”

The result leaves Real Madrid six points behind Barcelona heading into the international break following their opening seven games of the season.

But Mourinho believes there is still a long way to go in the title race.

“If they just leave us in peace and let us compete on a level playing field ⁠with everyone else, we’ve still got a long way to go,” he added.

“I don’t ​want to go so far as to say this was set up… I ​want to believe that they simply made a mistake.”

After the game, Real Madrid echoed Mourinho’s views in a website match report headlined: “A dreadful refereeing performance decides the derby”.

The report said: “Real Madrid lost at the Metropolitano in a derby marked by the poor officiating of Ortiz Arias, who failed to send off Cuti Romero in the first half for stepping on Bellingham’s knee (despite reviewing the play on the monitor) and Kang-In Lee for stepping on Valverde’s left ankle.

“Both decisions shaped the match, which was decided in the second half in favour of Atletico.”

Atletico responded with a social media post showing Mourinho at his press conference, with the caption ‘Stop referee harassment now’ – and, in a clear dig at the Portuguese, an accompanying video of the image coming out of a printer.

Atleti boss Diego Simeone says he respects other people’s opinions but underlined the need to be “careful” of what is said.

He added: “I understand that we’re in a privileged position with a lot of public scrutiny, as coaches, and whether it’s Mourinho, (Hansi) Flick, (Manuel) Pellegrini, me, or anyone else, we need to be careful about what we say.

“We have to know how to respect others, the referees, our colleagues and we all lose out. And when someone crosses that line of respect, it’s not right – you can’t cross that line.”