“They didn’t play football, they just defend, defend, defend. And as we say in my country, they brought the bus and they left the bus in front of the goal.” That was how Jose Mourinho introduced the concept of ‘parking the bus’ into English football after his Chelsea side had drawn 0-0 against Tottenham during his debut season in the Premier League. He could easily, though, have been talking about Manchester United’s ultra-defensive performance in Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Arsenal.
Despite using the term to belittle his opponents, Mourinho has ended up being associated with the term more than any other coach. When he was in charge of Manchester United, Manchester City fans would sing “Park the bus, Man United” to ridicule their rivals’ defensive style of play, which contrasted with City’s attacking and courageous tactics under Pep Guardiola, the Portuguese’s arch-nemesis. Mourinho, for his part, grew to see his pragmatism as a virtue, and some of his greatest wins as a manager came from parking the bus, most memorably during Chelsea’s 2-0 win at Anfield in 2014 which wrecked Liverpool’s Premier League title hopes.
Ruben Amorim, though, did not exactly revel in his side’s use of negative tactics against Arsenal as he almost apologised for his side’s strategy. “When you coach Manchester United, you cannot play too much like that,” he told Sky Sports. “Sometimes we have to do things that are not popular, but if you want to win and imagine one way to win, we have to do it because, in the end, we need the points.
“We don’t want to play like this, defending so much and giving the ball to the opponent. But with all the games, with all the problems and then the characteristics of the players, we tried to adapt and imagine the game that we could win, and we proved that today.”
Amorim was hinting that he would only use such tactics again sparingly, but he needs to forget his hang-ups, embrace his inner Mourinho and park the bus all the way to winning the Europa League…