Fenerbahce manager Jose Mourinho was given a four-match ban and fined by the Turkish Football Federation following his comments about Turkish referees after a match at Galatasaray.
The Turkish federation fined the 62-year-old Portuguese coach 1.6 million Turkish lira ($44,000) after he criticized the match officials in a media conference following a 0-0 Super Lig draw on Monday.
Mourinho served one of his suspended four games on Thursday when he was absent from the bench for Fenerbahce’s 4-1 Turkish Cup win at Gaziantep.
Fenerbahce will appeal the four-game ban, Alper Alpoglu, the club’s executive board member in charge of legal affairs. If Fenerbahce’s appeal is unsuccessful, Mourinho will miss the next three domestic games.
Earlier, Mourinho welcomed the decision to bring in a foreign referee for the game and also praised Slavko Vincic of Slovenia for a “top performance.”
Mourinho said he’d gone to see the referee and thank him following the game. When he saw the fourth official - a Turkish referee - Mourinho said he told him: “If you are the referee ... would be a disaster.”
Asked about a challenge early in the match, he said a Turkish referee would have reacted with a yellow card “after the big dive and their bench jumping around like monkeys.”
