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Three Points and Six Words: ‘We Won Because We Were Better’

MANCHESTER, England — Pep Guardiola conceded long ago that those few minutes after a game, when the news media extracts its pound of flesh, are José Mourinho’s domain.

“In here, in the press conference, he is the boss,” Guardiola snapped once, what must seem like a lifetime ago, when he was at Barcelona and his great rival was at Real Madrid.

No manager but Mourinho adheres so slavishly to the credo of the legendary Germany coach Sepp Herberger, that “after the game is before the game.” No manager is quite so adept at shaping the prism through which any result is interpreted, or at ensuring that a setback can easily be lost in a blizzard of words.