West Ham boss David Moyes says he will try not to lose his cool like Jose Mourinho in his Europa League final meltdown but concedes it is hard to contain your feelings as a manager.
Moyes suffered his own meltdown in the Europa League semi-finals against Eintracht Frankfurt last year when he was red carded for booting the ball at a ballboy. Declan Rice also received a ban after accusing the Spanish referee Jesus Gil Manzano of corruption following their 1-0 defeat.
Mourinho won the Europa Conference League last year with Roma – crying while celebrating afterwards – and speaking ahead of facing Fiorentina in the final, Moyes said: ‘We’ve hopefully learned some lessons from our journey last year.
‘We got to the semi-final, we found it difficult, we had a player sent off, we all lost our emotions with the way the game went. Hopefully we’ve learned from that.
‘Ultimately football is about emotions. People want to see managers showing their commitment and energy to the team.
‘Jose Mourinho is a serial winner. He’s proved that. Hopefully we will keep our emotions in check. Overall, getting to the final means that we hope we can perform well and show everything we can do. You want to be well-disciplined. You hope the referees are looking at that and that they’re doing their homework as well.’
Fiorentina's head coach Vincenzo Italiano surprisingly admitted his team are prepared to employ tactical fouling against West Ham in the Conference League final. On that, Moyes said he wants to beat them fair and square.
‘That will be down to the referees to sort that out,’ Moyes said. ‘It’s not for us to have an opinion on it. We’ll try to play a fair game. That’s always, from my point of view, the best way to do it.’
