Mourinho slams players' effort, says COVID-19 disrupted preparations

It took one match for Jose Mourinho to call out his team.

The Tottenham Hotspur boss criticized his players' effort after they opened their season with a 1-0 loss against Everton on Sunday, bemoaning the lack of intensity from his side.

"I didn't like my team," the Spurs manager said, according to David Hytner of the Guardian. "In the second half after their goal, we were poor and in my opinion we were not physically strong, no intensity. The team lacks in this moment many players' physical condition.

"The struggle started in the way we pressed - or I would say in the way we didn't press because our pressure up front was very, very poor. I would say it was lazy pressure and when you have lazy pressure you don't press and you let opponents build from the back."

Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored the lone goal of the contest, and Tottenham struggled to create chances in the second half after going behind.

The Portuguese tactician did hedge his critique somewhat, though, saying his players' preseason preparation was disrupted by multiple cases of COVID-19.

"We had cases of positive COVID. Of course, we have the right not to say which players were but we had players with positive COVID," Mourinho said, according to James Olley of ESPN. "We had other players with quarantine due to the proximity with positive players. We had a player in quarantine because he was on holiday in the country which England implements quarantine."

It was reported earlier this summer that midfielder Tanguy Ndombele tested positive for COVID-19.

"We had many of them, they went to the national teams so the preseason was a difficult preseason for many of the players," Mourinho added. "I couldn't expect them to be sharp, intense, agile. But I was expecting much more individually and much more collectively."