Sun 20 September 2020, 15:45
Tottenham HotspurWalking down the touchline for his post-match interviews at St Mary’s, Jose Mourinho spotted Harry Kane talking to Spurs TV, and stopped.
“Man of the Match, for me, Man of the Match,” he said. “Team performance, Man of the Match.”
A few minutes later, he explained why. “I know that everyone will say Sonny is Man of the Match because it’s an incredible achievement to score four goals in the Premier League, but I am a team coach, I am all about my team, and what Harry did for us is an example of the guy who is not going to have the highlights on him, but is fundamental for the team,” he explained.
Harry delivered all four assists for Heung-Min Son’s first Premier League hat-trick, a four-goal haul that turned this game around from 1-0 down as we entered added time in the first half, to a spectacular 5-2 victory. Harry added a deserved fifth himself.
Harry had an opener chalked off for a narrow offside call on four minutes, but Southampton took the lead and the initiative via Danny Ings on 32 minutes. Crucially, Sonny levelled in added time and once he’d combined again with Harry for 2-1 two minutes into the second half, it was a different story.
“At some moment in the first half I was wishing to finish the first half 1-0, so that goal came out of context in a period where we were not playing well,” said Jose, honestly. “But it’s one thing to be losing, another thing is 1-1, so it was very important.
“But more important than that was the way we played in the second half. I think the way we played in the second half, even (if we were) losing 1-0 at half-time, they wouldn’t stop us, because the second half the team dynamic was too strong for them.”
It just felt like a big win. “When you lose the first match, at home, you need somehow to try to compensate that,” added Jose. “If somebody tells me before the game against Everton that after two matches, we have three points, I wouldn’t be happy at all. I would expect to have six, minimum four.
“So, the defeat against Everton was a bad result for us. It was of course very important to win the next match, and the next match was away, and everybody knows that away, Tottenham was without a victory for about one year. To lose to Everton and then go to Bulgaria and Southampton and get two victories was very important, a great answer from the boys.”
