Mourinho Defends Mbappe and Vinicius Against Criticism

Jose Mourinho has never been shy with a metaphor. This time, he reached for an orchard to defend his two biggest stars.

Under the lights of the Bernabeu, in a week when Kylian Mbappe climbed another rung on the Champions League scoring ladder and Vinicius Jr ran himself into the ground, both men still walked off to boos. Mourinho’s response was sharp, simple – and pointed straight back at the stands.

Mourinho’s orchard

“In Portuguese, we have a proverb that says we only throw stones at the trees that have fruit,” he said, asked about Vinicius and the criticism over his defensive work.

The image fits. Vinicius has spent years bearing fruit for Real Madrid: Champions League titles, decisive goals, relentless output on the biggest stages. Mourinho didn’t need to dress it up with numbers, but he nodded to them anyway – the goals, the trophies, the duels won. In his eyes, the winger’s record is the trunk that supports everything.

“What Vini has done here over recent years – how many CL has he won, how many goals has he scored, how many balls has he won? His achievements speak for themselves,” Mourinho insisted. In other words: you don’t get pelted with stones unless you matter.

He leaned into the modern game’s obsession with data too. In this “digital era”, he argued, the numbers show Vinicius is edging close to his peak version and has already set records. The implication was clear: if this is him on the way up, imagine the noise when he actually gets there.

Mbappe under fire, Mourinho unmoved

The same logic applied to Mbappe. On Tuesday, the Frenchman’s opener in a 2-1 win over Inter Milan pulled him level for fifth on the all-time Champions League scorers list. That kind of company usually earns ovations. At the Bernabeu this week, it drew jeers.

Mourinho didn’t flinch.

“I want to remind you of the proverb I said before. He is the tree with a lot of fruit,” he said, extending the metaphor to a forward who scored 42 goals in 44 games last season and is in the conversation for the Ballon d’Or.

“Obviously a player who scores more than 40 goals for a team is never a problem,” he added.

Mourinho pushed back against the narrative that Mbappe and Vinicius don’t work hard enough without the ball. He painted a very different picture of Mbappe’s performance.

“I saw Kylian giving it his all. He was defending like an animal, even when he had nothing left. His attitude is incredible. It is a joy for me to see a player like that.”

That is not the language of a coach indulging a star. It is the language of a manager staking his authority on his players, drawing a line between criticism and what he sees every day.

Booing your own stars

So why the hostility? How do two of the most devastating attackers in world football end up being whistled by their own crowd?

Spanish football expert Guillem Balague admits the answer is murky.

“I don’t think anyone really knows why,” he told 5Live’s Euro Leagues podcast, before pointing to a cocktail of frustration and perception at Real Madrid.

There is the recent past: two seasons without a trophy. For a club built on silverware, that drought seeps into everything. When the cabinet stays shut, the biggest names carry the blame.

Then there is the relationship between the fans and their “two main stars”. Balague suggested both Mbappe and Vinicius are not fully embraced by the Bernabeu.

Mbappe, he said, “feels a little bit cold”, occasionally echoing Cristiano Ronaldo in the way he speaks as if he sits above the institution. His long-running transfer saga hasn’t helped either. Saying no to Real Madrid once is dangerous; doing it multiple times leaves a scar.

“And maybe they haven’t forgotten that,” Balague noted, before underlining the paradox: without Mbappe’s goals, the club’s situation would look very different.

Vinicius, meanwhile, is being judged on a harsher scale. Balague pointed out that the Brazilian worked “really hard without the ball” yet still faced whistles. He has renewed his contract, he has adapted his game, but the margin for error remains brutally small.

“They just don’t forgive him anything,” Balague said. The winger, he believes, “is feeling the heat of it.”

A fragile truce

This is the tension at the heart of Real Madrid right now. A coach fiercely defending his two fruit-laden trees. A fanbase that demands trophies, total commitment, and a sense that no player sits above the club. Two superstars whose numbers scream success, but whose every misstep draws a reaction.

The goals keep coming. The trophies, recently, have not. Somewhere in that gap, the whistles have taken root.