Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner

by Patrick Barclay

  Why else did we like him as we shopped for Christmas in 2004? Many Arsenal supporters felt they had reason to thank him because he kept putting one over on Sir Alex Ferguson. At the same time there were United fans who simply liked the fact that he was not Arsène Wenger. Neutrals were grateful for a disturbance of the none-too-cosy duopoly that had ruled English football for twelve years with scarcely an interruption. They thought Mourinho might spice up the so-called mind games between Ferguson and Wenger, which were getting tedious in a way all fans of television soap opera would have found familiar. There were other factors in his popularity, including his looks – I mean: lots of people have a nice smile, and Mourinho’s would melt ice, but he even has a nice scowl – and that indefinable quality which inspires curiosity. Why, I remember people asking at Christmas parties, does such a dapper man not shave before being interviewed on television after matches? Why does he leave his tie slightly loose?

  So much for the tittle-tattle of a celebrity-obsessed age. Mourinho had also been disarming his fellow coaches, the faces of the English footballing establishment, who had called him arrogant when he first came but who now grinned when you uttered his name and spoke with an affection not normally accorded the ridiculously advantaged. ‘His team became so good so quickly,’ said David Moyes, ‘that you just had to admire him. He instilled such confidence and belief in his team and, while that’s easier when you have top players, he did it at Porto too. So you could see that he’d earned his stripes, come up through the ranks and deserved to be in this top job.’ All over the country coaches warmed to Mourinho, albeit with an air of slight bemusement; they noted aspects of his methods while admitting that the whole package defied analysis because he kept getting so much right and so little wrong. Even Ferguson and Wenger had their recurrent weaknesses; neither, to take a common instance, appeared capable of distinguishing a top-class goalkeeper from a cheese-and-tomato sandwich (at least until Ferguson belatedly hit upon the idea of bringing Edwin van der Sar from Fulham). Mourinho, having resuscitated the career of Vítor Baía at Porto, arrived at Chelsea at the same time as the best keeper from the 2004 European Championship, Petr ech, and, after initially deciding to start the season with the man in possession, the much-respected Carlo Cudicini, had a late change of mind on the evidence of pre-season performances and promoted the newcomer; before long, ech was to set a Premier League record by going 1,025 minutes without conceding a goal.

  Underneath it all, I suppose, we were still waiting for Mourinho to fall. Not maliciously but out of curiosity. To see if the tin split. To discover what was inside it.

  Blippin’ marvellous

  So after the Christmas of 2004 was past and people, having given with enormous generosity to tsunami-relief funds, returned to life’s trivia, the occasional threat to Mourinho’s status in our football-oriented society arose.

  Towards the end of January it was reported that Mourinho, with Kenyon and two agents – so hazardous had football’s waters become, it appeared, that even the agents were going around in pairs – had gathered in a London hotel room with Ashley Cole. The Arsenal and England left-back had two and a half years left on his club contract at the time and was therefore not allowed, under Premier League regulations, to meet a prospective new employer without permission from his current bosses: ‘tapped’, as the vernacular would have it. Arsenal clearly did not want to lose one of the more important members of Arsène Wenger’s squad and were acutely displeased. Mourinho tried to dance out of discomfort, quipping that he had been in Milan on the day in question with Adriano (Internazionale’s Brazilian striker, with whom, we were left to presume, Mourinho had been linked by the Italian press), but the joke fell flat on its face.

  A few days later, Chelsea’s doctor, Neil Frazer, left the club. Although the reason was officially given as ill health, he had incurred Mourinho’s displeasure on several occasions.

  Then the Cole allegation was revisited, the Sun producing a witness, a 24-year-old room-service waiter called Ray Mason, a fine specimen of a breed unique to the English tabloid landscape in that he spoke almost entirely in fluent journalese. Mourinho, Mason claimed, had been rude to him, waving him away without a word when he tried to lay a plate. ‘It wasn’t until later,’ Mason added, ‘that I realised the enormity of what I had seen – a dodgy meeting that could blow the Premier League race wide open.’ He alluded to Chelsea’s substantial lead in the race, the implication being that, if the Premier League were to dock points from Chelsea as a punishment, Manchester United and Arsenal might be allowed back into serious contention for the title. However, although the Premier League appointed a retired judge to conduct an inquiry into the affair, no one acquainted with the politics and practice of football was ever in the slightest doubt that Chelsea would receive a fine, which turned out to be £300,000, and a warning in the form of a three-point deduction, suspended for a year. Mourinho was fined £200,000 and later appealed; Cole was relieved of £100,000.

  Their crime, in truth, was to be found out; most clubs ‘tap’ prospective signings in one way or another, usually through an intermediary, who might be an agent, a fellow player or even a journalist. And what, pray, had Kenyon been doing with Eriksson that night when the snooping snapper caught them through the curtains? The Football Association saw no value in an inquiry into their own employee’s behaviour. This Premier League stance smacked of government by show trial. In any case, Chelsea dropped their publicly supposed interest in Cole with alacrity. At least until 2006, when they signed him from Arsenal.

  One of the agents, Pini Zahavi, had been doing much of their business since Roman Abramovich took over (the other present in the hotel, Jonathan Barnett, was Cole’s man). And Zahavi was to figure in another significant episode when, two months after the Cole affair came to light, the ubiquitous Kenyon was found to have hobnobbed in London restaurants one Saturday night with Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand – another client of Zahavi, who was also there. Ferguson seethed and Wenger tartly observed that it was ‘like seeing the same movie twice’. Except that Mourinho was now at a distance from the villain’s role. While Kenyon protested his innocence, Zahavi stressed that Ferdinand was anxious to stay at United – if only his salary of £70,000 a week could be raised to something more like £120,000 – without dispelling Sir Alex Ferguson’s suspicion that his heart was already moving south. Kenyon tried to wipe the fresh mud off his sharp suit. None had stuck to Mourinho. Cole was later to join him at Chelsea.

  Of rather more pressing significance, however, were events on boggy fields during the long, wet remainder of this winter of 2004–05. We had been waiting for Chelsea to encounter some adversity. The majority of people were not especially anxious that their Premier League lead be damaged – the most likely challengers, after all, seemed to be Manchester United, for whom little love was to be found outside their own vast global family – but we had a curiosity about how Mourinho and his charges would deal with it. The word most frequently used was ‘blip’, which was appropriate because Chelsea had been winning with the monotonous regularity of a healthy heartbeat, and the prelude to the week beginning on Sunday, 20 February featured much speculation that this might be the time. Mourinho duly announced he would send a weakened team to Newcastle for the FA Cup tie on that day, explaining that his key players – the likes of John Terry, Frank Lampard and Damien Duff – were not ‘Supermen’ and would have to be rested in readiness for the even more important Champions League first leg in Barcelona three days later.

  Given that the week or, to be precise, period of eight days was to culminate in a Carling Cup final against Liverpool in Cardiff that would present Chelsea with an opportunity to take their first trophy under Mourinho, many felt he had little option but to rotate his players. He chose to blame the FA for making Chelsea play so late in the weekend prior to a Champions League week (and had a point, for all the Spanish and Italian contenders for Europe’s biggest prize, including Barcelona, had finished their domestic matches by Saturd
ay night), but it was a useful test for his expensively assembled reserves and they failed it. With Chelsea a goal down at half-time in the Tyneside sleet – the conditions were so inclement Mourinho had abandoned his customary grey cashmere coat for something more suited to a ski slope – he gambled by sending on all three of his permitted substitutes in the shapes of Lampard, Duff and Eidur Gudjohnsen. Within a few minutes Wayne Bridge had been carried off with a broken ankle. Chelsea, unable to equalise despite an improved level of performance, lost another man when their goalkeeper, on this occasion Carlo Cudicini, was sent off, leaving them with nine players, two of whom, Duff and William Gallas, were limping as a result of collisions and rated doubtful to start at Barcelona.

  In the previous match, a Premier League visit to Everton, the home side had been reduced to ten men early when James Beattie foolishly butted Gallas, helping Chelsea to overcome an obstacle that was expected to be one of their more difficult on the road to the title. Mourinho, when it was put to him that Sir Alex Ferguson had cited this as an example of luck, replied, in a tone that affected surprise: ‘No. I don’t feel that. Because Beattie made a big mistake. He deserved a red card. If he had not deserved a red card and the referee showed him one, yes, I’d say the luck was with me.’ This kind of logic, upon which, in my experience, every single successful coach is able to call at will, demands a great deal of thought from us. Could it now, I wondered, be applied to Mourinho’s misfortune? Had he suddenly become, to paraphrase Napoleon, an unlucky general? Or, even worse, had he unnecessarily exposed players to injury with a mad gamble that would leave them debilitated in Barcelona and, perhaps, Cardiff?

  Whatever the truth of the matter, we looked to the bench for a slippage of composure. We saw Mourinho congratulate his Newcastle counterpart, Graeme Souness, a few seconds before the final whistle and then, having walked on to the pitch, first console his own players then shake hands with several of their conquerors. He had performed this last act of sportsmanship before, but never, surely, in such circumstances. Interviewed afterwards, he said he was proud of his players, tendered a compliment to the referee, Mark Halsey, and added that he hoped Newcastle would continue to progress to the FA Cup final.

  Such dignity was not only inherently pleasant but efficacious in applying a bandage to Chelsea’s wound, and it occurred to me that Arsène Wenger could have done with a touch of the same at Old Trafford earlier in the season. There, Arsenal were put out of their stride, and deprived of the distinction of having gone fifty League matches unbeaten, by Manchester United’s unedifyingly harsh tackling – to be precise, that of the Neville brothers on José Antonio Reyes – and a couple of refereeing decisions. The so-called Battle of the Buffet ensued, during which at least one Arsenal player threw food at Ferguson and the managers became embroiled in a furious confrontation. Arsenal’s season was never quite the same again. Not for a few months anyway. It was still pretty good by the standards of most clubs, but soon they began to lose their grip on the Premier League title and had to be content with a fortuitous victory over United in the FA Cup final. Was this because Wenger had let them be burdened by the baggage of Old Trafford? True, the circumstances were different at Newcastle – Mourinho had no one but himself to blame, no outrage to absorb – but he was certainly not going to let a similar loss of momentum occur if he could avoid it. He would not countenance a turning point. He called upon his principles and looked forward, concentrating on the players who would do duty at Camp Nou.

  When the Chelsea party landed in Barcelona, it looked as if Mourinho was in top form. He went to the official press conference the day before the match and, without prompting, said he would announce not only his team – there were gasps, because at this level a coach never shows his hand in advance – but Barcelona’s too. And he duly did, throwing in the name of the referee for good measure. The referee’s name was Anders Frisk. We were to hear much more of it and this time Mourinho could not evade the mud. But for now the surprise of the assembled media representatives was mixed with amusement at Mourinho’s latest antic. As for what the players must have thought of such a bold departure from convention, I was reminded of something the former Newcastle manager Arthur Cox told me, when I came across him reading a biography of Montgomery of Alamein. ‘Footballers,’ he said, ‘are like soldiers. They love their generals to be a bit eccentric, like Cloughie. It gives them something to talk about, binds them.’ As for the rest of us, we had been charmed like cobras. We sank into our baskets and wished away the nagging reservations aired by the author of an editorial in the Spanish newspaper AS, who had said of Mourinho, after listening to his boast of having won as many European titles in his relatively short time at Porto (one) as Barcelona had done in their entire history: ‘Although he won many trophies in Portugal, there were too many bad manners shown to opponents and too many dirty tricks. He has continued that at Chelsea.’

  No doubt the author of those sentiments smiled in vindication as Duff, who had not been among the names listed by Mourinho, ran out at the Camp Nou. The explanation that the Irishman’s recovery had been quicker than expected was received sceptically. But the fall from grace was only beginning. At half-time, with Chelsea leading 1–0, the teams were heading down the tunnel when the Barcelona coach, Frank Rijkaard, approached Frisk and said he felt Chelsea’s goal should have been disallowed for offside against Duff. This was an inaccurate observation made in the wrong way at the wrong time and the Swedish referee told him so. But it was not as wrong as Chelsea’s subsequent imputations against Frisk. An allegation that Rijkaard had been witnessed leaving Frisk’s room was scorned (even by the English press, who, though they do love a drama, especially if it involves a wily foreign villain or two, also pride themselves on being able to spot a false claim from a mile away). A jaundiced eye also met Mourinho’s implication that Frisk had proceeded to favour Barcelona by sending off Didier Drogba, who was shown a second yellow card for having raised his foot in challenging the goalkeeper. Down to ten men again, Chelsea had been unable to stem the flow of Barcelona attacks and lost 2–1.

  Now Mourinho was not so cocky. He refused to attend the post-match media conference and instructed his players not to give any interviews either. Meanwhile Chelsea leaked the allegation about Rijkaard and Frisk and promised to lodge an official protest with UEFA, the governing body of European football. Since, from the moment of Mourinho’s appointment, Chelsea had been indivisible from his image, it was he who bore the brunt of it. For the first time, he was not being taken seriously.

  He had returned to the city where, under Bobby Robson and then Louis van Gaal, he used to work, undoubtedly one of football’s capitals, and behaved in a manner that made him appear provincial. His peevish flouncing was a hark back to the great divide between Oporto and Lisbon, which all too often manifests itself in suspicion that a referee has either been bought or is giving the rub of the green free of charge. Mourinho’s president during the great revival of Porto, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, encouraged this. It is a far from exclusively Portuguese phenomenon. A similarly paranoid atmosphere has been observed in other small ponds inhabited by big fish: Scotland comes to mind. But there was another plausible reason, which arose in a conversation I had with Van Gaal, why Barcelona should have been the place where Mourinho went too far. Although Mourinho would probably not admit it, he had unfinished business with the Catalan club. For all that his years there gave him the perfect grounding for a top coach, Mourinho was often treated almost dismissively in Barcelona, referred to among the club’s large media entourage (and even by some within the club) as ‘The Translator’. This may help to explain his otherwise gratuitous-sounding reminder that he had won as many European titles as Barcelona. It may even excuse that. It hardly justified his dragging of Frisk into the crossfire of the ensuing battle.

  So the form of defiance Mourinho chose did his reputation no favours and he was to pay for it with banishment from the dugout and dressing rooms during each leg of the next Champions League conte
st, against Bayern Munich. It could, of course, have been argued on his behalf that the purpose of his post-match behaviour in the Camp Nou had been to deflect attention from the failure of his team to adjust tactically to Drogba’s dismissal. If so, it was a ploy in which only a Machiavellian – ‘in order to keep his people united and faithful’, wrote Machiavelli, ‘a prince must not be concerned with being reputed as a cruel man’ – would have taken great pride.

  Nor did Mourinho distinguish himself on the eighth day. He became the most prominent figure in a cup final, and for a coach to assume that role, as Paul Hayward sharply observed in the Daily Telegraph, was about as appropriate as for a referee to do so. It was Sunday, 27 February and Chelsea’s opportunity in Cardiff to win the Carling Cup. By overcoming Liverpool at the Millennium Stadium they could lay hands on their first trophy of the epoch and, while gripping that emotionally precious metal, more acutely sense the comforting notion of Mourinho as Midas. Again, however, the coach saw much to ruffle him on the pitch and was animated as his men strove to cancel out a goal which John Arne Riise had quite beautifully struck on the volley in the first minute with the assistance of Chelsea marking loose enough to raise a statue’s eyebrows.

  A quarter of an hour from what might have been the final whistle came assistance from Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool captain who had nearly joined Chelsea the previous summer; endeavouring to assist his defence, he headed into his own net. Mourinho rose from the bench and, smirking, put a pointed index finger to his lips, as if to say ‘Shush’. A section of Liverpool supporters behind him took offence and Mourinho, on the advice of the fourth official, Phil Crossley, was escorted down the tunnel. He went to the Sky television room, where, in a state of extreme agitation, he watched the thirty minutes of extra time, during which a 3–2 victory was secured. He emerged for the presentation of the trophy and medals and resumed his habit of approaching the players of both sides. After congratulating his men, he toured the dejected Liverpool ranks, coaches, backroom boys and players, including Gerrard, whose hand he clutched and face he sympathetically cupped; Gerrard responded with a pat on the ribcage. Mourinho was enjoying himself hugely and the thought did occur, not for the first time, that here was something that set Mourinho apart from his fellow coaches: while most of them react to the final whistle by making for the dressing rooms, his instincts take him in the opposite direction. Might he, in gravitating towards the pitch, be seeking his share of the limelight he could never attract as a player?