Tottenham Hotspur journalist Alasdair Gold has revealed why Jose Mourinho’s assistant coach Joao Sacramento was not sitting with the Spurs manager during their recent 2-0 win over Manchester City at the weekend.
This comes after Gold uploaded a video onto his YouTube channel where he looked back over the win against Pep Guardiola’s side.
Spurs took the lead in the opening few minutes of the game after Heung-min Son scored the opening goal before Giovani Lo Celso doubled the home side’s lead in the second half, securing all three points for the north London club (per BBC Sport).
On the topic of Sacramento and his whereabouts during the victory over City, Gold had this to say on the matter.
He said: “Another thing I noticed that was slightly different, which you may not have picked up on your TV screens, was that Joao Sacramento was not on the bench. Where he was, was about five, six rows back sitting at a desk, it might be something that I’ll ask Mourinho about this week, but I presume it was to have a better overview of what was happening on the pitch and it’s something I’ve never seen him do before during a game.
“Normally he’s by Mourinho’s side but what he was doing, he was a little bit up, he was wearing a face mask and bashing away on a tablet because let’s not forget, he is one of the top tactical analysts in the game, that’s kind of where he came through and studied as well.
“So, he kept shouting down things, you saw Ledley King turning around listening to him and him passing on messages to Mourinho or Mourinho himself turning around and talking to him. Let me stress, I don’t think it has anything to do with isolation or anything like that because he was around other people. It wasn’t anything like that. I think this was an actual move for him just to see how the game looked from a slightly higher position and then being able to shout down and give instructions.”
According to the official club website, Sacramento joined Tottenham back in November 2019 having performed a similar role at French club LOSC Lille as their assistant head coach since January 2017.
In a recent article Gold wrote on the matter, the journalist said that Sacramento is considered to be one of Europe’s “brightest young minds in the field, pioneering aspects of video analysis of games.”
TIF Thoughts on Alasdair Gold’s comments on Sacramento…
It sounds like Sacramento’s whereabouts during the match against City was a ploy by Mourinho to use his assistant to get a better view of the match and get a better tactical grip on the game.
Was Spurs' performance against City their best performance of the season so far?
Yes
No
Given how Spurs won the match, kept a clean sheet and earned themselves an impressive team rating of 7.1/10 for their performance, we think Sacramento’s tactical analysis and communication with Mourinho worked a treat for them and we believe that they should maybe repeat this plan going forward.
So, it will be intriguing to see whether or not Sacramento will be used in this way again or whether he will return to the bench alongside Mourinho for Spurs’ next fixtures.