Sports news:Jose Mourinho's 'spin' doesn't hide the hard work ahead for Man United

Sports news,Rafa Benitez famously commented that "Football is a lie." I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's pretty obvious to me that so much of the game is "spin." Often, the very same event, viewed from different perspectives, can be read and defined in so many ways.

Watching Jose Mourinho after Man United won the Europa League drove the point home. It felt as if he was an actor in someone else's play. I don't mean it in a negative way, either. He has little choice. We like very simple, black-and-white narratives and he's been hammered with the same, easy-to-understand-but-difficult-to-explain themes for the past two months.

"Does winning the Europa League -- and thereby qualifying for the Champions League -- mean the season is a success?"

Mourinho, perhaps the most "mediatic" of managers, dances the dance with the best of them. So he spins.

The trophies become three because he also won the League Cup and the Charity Shield. Now, when he includes the Charity Shield as a "trophy," he's well aware that it will polarize. And he knows perfectly well that it's essentially a preseason game (against Leicester) and to get there, he didn't need to lift a finger (Louis Van Gaal did the heavy lifting by winning the FA Cup). But it counts. It's part of the narrative. It sells. So roll with it.

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(He did stop short of calling it a Treble-winning season, possibly because he actually won two legitimate Trebles and there's no point in devaluing those.)

The whole narrative of turning Manchester United's season into some kind of underdog tale -- because of the injuries, because of the fixture list, because of the Premier League not scheduling games at a time that suits him, because of the crummy players he inherited from Louis van Gaal -- is another obvious example of this.sports newshttp://borosora.blogspot.com

It's not that it's incorrect (United did play a lot of games and faced a lot of hurdles) but rather it's devoid of context or any kind of factual analysis, starting with whether his competitors had it better or worse. And because it's Mourinho speaking, the reaction from many is purely binary. To his enemies, he's a whining crybaby; to his acolytes, he's the miracle man.

And as for whether the year was a success? Well, let's ask Mourinho.

"I think the season was really good. A victory for pragmatics, a victory for the humble people, people that respect opponents, that try to stop opponents' qualities and try to exploit opponents' weakness," he said. "[The season] was based on pragmatism; not poets, but humble people."

Again, for his critics, it's an alley-oop. To which poets is he referring? We can only speculate, but you'd imagine it's the shaven-headed guy across town from him, the gangly emotional Jurgen Klopp down the M62 and the lanky, bespectacled professorial type in North London. All of whom, as of now, have a big fat goose egg in the trophy count for 2016-17.

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