Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner

by Patrick Barclay

  Maybe it is not quite as simple as that. Maybe; he does love footballers as a breed and is genuinely drawn to their presence. But, in essence, the answer is yes. Mourinho is a performer. There is a passage in the book he produced with his journalist friend Luís Lourenço about how, when he returned to Benfica as Porto coach, he milked the abuse of a huge crowd before the match: ‘I made a point of walking on alone, before the team … It was fantastic, an amazing feeling. I had never been a first-class player who could feel, for example, what Figo had felt upon returning to Barcelona [with Real Madrid], and so I had no idea what it would be like to have 80,000 people whistling and jeering at me. I believe that, when we are mentally strong, those people who seek to intimidate and disturb us have exactly the opposite effect. Upon hearing the whistles and jeers … I felt as if I were the most important person in the world.’

  Anyone seeing him amid the more congenial atmosphere of the Millennium Stadium that late afternoon – most of the Liverpool supporters had drifted away, leaving the steep slopes to the hordes of blue-bedecked celebrators – would have thought him a happy man indeed. Yet behind the serenity of his smile was a grievance waiting to emerge and the post-match interviews provided the ideal opportunity. The first questioner to confront him was Sky’s pitchside man, Geoff Shreeves, who, after the routine on-camera pleasantries (in which Shreeves inquires as to how big a win it is and the triumphant coach, without being able to quantify it in cubic centimetres, says he is delighted for the club and the supporters), asked Mourinho if he regretted the behaviour that had led to his banishment from the arena. ‘I don’t regret,’ he replied. ‘I have a lot of respect for Liverpool fans and the signal was not for them. It was for the English press.’ Balderdash. But he had hinted at a problem with journalists before the match, accusing them of increasing the stress of expectation on Chelsea by mentioning the money the club had spent on players. Such bizarre complaints scarcely register with press or public and are, in any case, primarily intended for consumption by the complainant’s players as a motivational device. The unusual development here was that Mourinho was also looking for a confrontation with Sky, who are not usually regarded within football as mischievous (and have sound commercial reasons for wanting to maintain that reputation). Addressing Shreeves directly, as if holding the pitchside reporter responsible for every utterance of every commentator and analyst employed by Rupert Murdoch’s organisation, he asserted: ‘In my opinion you try to do everything to disturb Chelsea.’ He had watched Sky’s coverage of a Premier League match the previous day, in which Manchester United, by beating Portsmouth, had cut Chelsea’s advantage over them to six points. ‘You spoke more about Chelsea than Manchester United and, because the gap was cut, the sun shone.’ When Shreeves responded that he sounded like a man under pressure, Mourinho flatly denied it.

  So much for the dignity he had exuded at Newcastle a week earlier – and for which he had been praised by the Sky presenter Richard Keys. Once again we had seen the Porto mentality, the belief that the media would take one side or another for sinister reasons rather than, by loose consensus, arrive at the typically English notion – presumably expressed by the commentator at Old Trafford that Saturday when United won – that the result would add interest to the title race.

  Often the top coaches are more pleasant in defeat than victory. Arsène Wenger is an exception, but Sir Alex Ferguson could occasionally accept adversity with good grace. The Scot could also turn a moment of vindication into a weapon and that was what Mourinho did in Cardiff. What a week it had been. He had maintained his reputation as a winner despite having encountered the blip, but along the way lost a little of his allure. The fact that he was tucked out of sight while his players were scoring the goals that took the Cup to west London was noted. The Daily Mirror, for so long a sorry example of a thing that ain’t what it used to be, echoed its glorious past with a picture of the Chelsea players and the headline: ‘They won it – he lost it.’

  The perception of Mourinho had subtly altered. There were echoes here of what had happened to the England team’s first foreign coach. When the FA had appointed Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2000 he was lauded for his calmness and restraint – yet two years later when England slumped to defeat by Brazil in the World Cup, the same ‘cool’ Swede was criticised for lacking the blood-and-thunder approach we were supposed to have rejected. Now the new king of cool had lost his crown. Mourinho’s honeymoon was over.

  Some people thought the ‘Shush’ gesture innocuous, arguing that if Liverpool fans could not cope with a bit of banter they were in the wrong game. Others thought it ridiculously childish behaviour for someone in a position of leadership. Certainly if a player had done anything exceptionally silly – if Wayne Rooney had scored for Manchester United on his return to Everton, say, then mooned at the crowd and been sent off – he could have expected condemnation on all sides. And, had the hypothetical offender been a Chelsea player, he would surely have been referred to the strict code of conduct every squad member was handed after Mourinho arrived at Stamford Bridge. Later Mourinho was to touch on the issue of what was and was not acceptable, saying he had seen Adriano celebrate with such a gesture after scoring a goal for Inter without upsetting anyone. It was not the first time he had used Adriano to illustrate a point. Nor was it the first time Mourinho had confused himself with a star footballer. But there is a difference, surely, between the standards expected of a coach and a player, just as the teacher is expected to be above the more mischievous traits of the pupil. Critics wondered if such debates might be raging within a polyglot squad. But word came back that the dressing room was solidly behind Mourinho the winner. So the players did not see him as a posturing narcissist.

  In the pre-Mourinho period, a prevalent characteristic of top coaches in England was the knack of being able to mask any selfishness in their ambition. Sir Alex Ferguson always gave the impression of being willing to fight for his players if necessary, Arsène Wenger of regarding them almost as his own flesh and blood. Mourinho infuses the players with his own super-confidence, creating an almost evangelical atmosphere. In this sense, he follows in the tradition of Bill Shankly, who made Liverpool’s Anfield stadium a fortress in the sixties.

  Once, when an inexperienced reporter for the Guardian in Manchester, I resolved to interview Shankly by phone. The subject my sports editor had chosen was Ian Callaghan, a midfielder for whom Shankly had an acknowledged and understandable affection. I rang Anfield and asked to be put through to Shankly – these days you would be transferred to a media department which would advise you to come to the manager’s weekly briefing or, if that were too late for your purpose, consult the club’s website – and the next thing I knew a familiar rasping voice, the sort of voice you would get by crossing James Cagney with a Scottish coal miner, was on the line.

  ‘Yes!’

  He had to say it twice because I hesitated, feeling not only unworthy but, to be honest, frightened.

  ‘Mr Shankly?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  ‘Um, Mr Shankly, what do you think of Ian Callaghan?’

  There was a silence that seemed to last an eternity before Shankly spoke again. And then he spat it out:

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  I was about to apologise for having troubled him when he continued: ‘Aye, son, Jesus Christ.’ And I realised he was answering my question. ‘Cally’s the nearest thing on this earth to Jesus Christ.’ The way he lived his life was an example to all; he was gentle and yet courageous; and so it went on, Shankly talking vividly while my heart pounded at the excitement of securing such a dramatic tribute as the introduction to my piece. Shankly had a similar level of admiration for quite a few of his players, among them Kevin Keegan and the late Emlyn Hughes, and never hesitated to express it and, partly in consequence, they felt and behaved like world-beaters.

  There was a reminder of this when Mourinho spoke before the trip to Barcelona. In truth, for all Sir Alex Ferguson might have been saying about luck, Che
lsea had not been enjoying the best of it. In particular they had lost Arjen Robben through injury – not for the first time and not for the last during a season in which the young Dutchman still demonstrated that, if allowed more opportunities to shine, he might have beaten even Frank Lampard and John Terry to the player-of-the-year awards. Robben had been the victim of a fearsome tackle by Aaron Mokoena at Blackburn and a journalist wondered if Mourinho now wished he had bought a reinforcement in the wide-attacker department during the winter transfer window that had just closed – if only as a temporary measure. Mourinho had stayed out of the market. Was that not taking a risk? Mourinho answered scornfully. ‘If I had bought someone for that position,’ he said, ‘that would have been a big risk. Because the player I bought could have been on the bench for months. To replace Duff and Robben – no chance! You could buy one of the best players in the world – and he’d end up having to sit on the bench.’ It did not answer the question but, as endorsements go, it didn’t half ring.

  Then Mourinho was asked about his young captain, John Terry, who was having such an inspirational season in the Premier League as to be a hot tip for at least one of the awards (in the event Terry was chosen by the players while Lampard won the football writers’ vote). English football was one thing, though, Europe quite another and Barcelona had candidates for world awards. Surely, the next questioner suggested, an attack featuring Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto’o would present a big test of Terry’s progress. ‘It will be a big test,’ replied Mourinho, ‘for them.’

  Can you imagine how Terry and his team-mates felt when they read their papers the next morning?

  Just a few weeks later, however, in the aftermath of their aggregate victory over Bayern Munich in the next round, Mourinho was actually being accused of overshadowing his players’ achievements. Under UEFA rules governing the suspension of coaches, he had been banned from having any contact with his players after they arrived at the stadium for each leg. There were the earpiece antics at Stamford Bridge, where he was suspected of transmitting messages by way of a device concealed in the woolly hat of his fitness coach, Rui Faria, and the sudden exit from the stands at Munich’s Olympic Stadium when he felt he was being crowded by photographers, journalists and German fans and fled by taxi to the team hotel to watch the match on television. Every day, it seemed, there was a fresh vignette, a new controversy, another reason for Mourinho to hog the headlines. ‘I’m not interested in myself,’ he insisted. ‘I’m not interested in my image and what people think about me, only in getting results. Some of the things I say and do, I’m just thinking of the group. They know me. They understand that.’ The players certainly seemed to; they queued to attest that, far from Mourinho’s behaviour being a distraction from the pursuit of the biggest prizes, it actually helped them by lightening the pressure.

  Meanwhile the method in the apparent madness of his tilting at the UEFA windmill was to make the team feel somehow threatened, cornered and required to stand together against any danger that ensued. To induce the underdog spirit in the most financially potent football club the world had seen at that stage – Manchester City had yet to attract the attention of Abu Dhabi – was quite an achievement, but Mourinho’s Chelsea never got too comfortable until the battle for the Premier League was won.

  The enemy of football

  Far from being chastened by the widespread revulsion at his comments about the referee in Barcelona, Mourinho told the Portuguese media within a matter of days that the result had been ‘adulterated’ owing to Frisk’s dismissal of Drogba. He was called to account by an irate UEFA and later, after a thrilling Chelsea victory on aggregate at Stamford Bridge had culminated in further rancour – this time the crucial refereeing decision went Mourinho’s way as Pierluigi Collina ignored Barcelona’s protests that Ricardo Carvalho had illicitly prevented their goalkeeper, Victor Valdés, from reaching John Terry’s winning header – Mourinho was ordered to sit out the quarter-final. Coach and club were also fined for the relatively technical offences of having snubbed the press and neglected, despite exhortations, to get their team on the Barcelona pitch in time for the second half to start on schedule. Steve Clarke, one of his assistants, and a security officer, Les Miles, were admonished by UEFA for their parts in the formation of the tale about Rijkaard’s visit to the referee’s room; Mourinho had since admitted he had seen nothing and relied on the testimony of the pair, whom UEFA deemed guilty of a mere misunderstanding caused by the layout of the stadium.

  This is how Mourinho’s story lurched ungraciously towards the inevitable, in his own words:

  At first: ‘When I saw Rijkaard entering the referee’s dressing room I couldn’t believe it. When Didier Drogba was sent off I wasn’t surprised.’

  Several days later: ‘Rijkaard was in the referee’s room for over five minutes. I know because my assistants were at the door while the meeting took place.’

  And finally, after he had taken refuge in legal advice to go easy on the subject for a while: ‘If something happens in a football stadium, and I don’t see it, and if some of my people say to me, “I saw this, this happened,” and if another one arrives and says, “It’s true,” I have to believe my people. I have to treat it as the truth, use it as the truth. Because I cannot work without loyalty. I have to believe my people. So, because I’m loyal to my people, I’m involved in something I don’t want.’

  Chelsea had been outraged by statements from William Gaillard, then UEFA’s head of communications, who had accused them of, among other things, ‘using lies as a pre-match tactic ahead of the second leg’ with Barcelona. Who can say whether those falsehoods affected Collina’s performance at Stamford Bridge? Certainly there were no lingering complaints from Barcelona. But they were out of the Champions League and Mourinho was in disgrace, offering coded explanations to which no one was really listening.

  Meanwhile it had become clear that the real victim of the episode would be an innocent party. Frisk had suddenly retired from refereeing at forty-two (the same age as Mourinho), saying that he was ‘scared to let my children leave the house’ after threats received by post, telephone and email. The Swede, a little too demonstrative in style and blond-streaked in appearance for some tastes but officially rated behind only Collina in the world, rejected appeals to reconsider from, among others, the chairman of the UEFA referees’ committee, Volker Roth, who expressed his revulsion by declaring: ‘People like Mourinho are the enemy of football.’ Roth was right in the sense that coaches who casually make the referee’s lot more onerous and stressful are sabotaging the chances of good decisions; Frisk did say the reason he was leaving the game was that he could no longer trust himself, by which he clearly meant guarantee the purity of his decision-making. But mostly there was just basic human sympathy for him. As the Swiss referee Urs Meier, who had been a victim of similarly vile English threats after denying Sven-Göran Eriksson’s national team a goal against Portugal in the European Championship eight months earlier, put it, rather mildly: ‘UEFA and FIFA [the world body] have to protect referees from attacks like this.’

  A certain disaffection with Chelsea had set in. They were portrayed as an arrogant, bullying club with nouveau riche values. Arsène Wenger made a fair point when he asked why Abramovich did not come out and show some leadership – ‘I’d like to hear a voice at Chelsea say what they really want to do, what they want to be in England and how they want to behave’ – but there was no response and so Mourinho continued to take most of the criticism. The newspapers gave it, energetically and, at times, hysterically, publishing lists of supposed misdemeanours that soon became risible, with anything remotely connected with a difference of opinion being laid at Mourinho’s door. One supposed diary of disgrace actually began:

  12 Sept., 2004: Accuses referee Rob Styles of being ‘ridiculous’ after he fails to give Didier Drogba a penalty in the 0–0 draw at Aston Villa.

  Well, well. A coach is not enamoured of a referee’s judgement. Whatever next? In fact, television had
proved Mourinho right. But the list went on.

  29 Sept.: Is spat at by Porto fan before Chelsea’s 3–1 win at Stamford Bridge in the Champions League.

  Mourinho’s part in this crime – provoking the fan by his presence, perhaps – was not described. Nor was it explained why the next charge on the sheet, that of being accused by Adrian Mutu of lying during the Romanian forward’s period of serious cocaine abuse, had stuck.

  Coincidentally a couple of charges were brought by the FA which must have vexed Mourinho. First Chelsea were fined £15,000 for ‘failing to control their players’ at Blackburn, where the home side’s robust approach had cost Chelsea the services of Arjen Robben. Then Mourinho himself was relieved of £5,000 for having observed of Manchester United’s performance in a Carling Cup semi-final: ‘In the second half it was whistle and whistle and whistle, fault and fault, cheat and cheat.’ The FA should have known that Mourinho was not really calling United cheats. When using the word ‘fault’, by which he meant ‘foul’, in conjunction with ‘cheat’, he was talking about tactical fouling, which, whether we like it or not, is part of the game and should be a legitimate subject of discussion. No wonder, after all the fuss Celtic and Manchester United had made about Porto’s little tricks when he had charge of that club, he was angry about these fines. But he was getting to know our ways and the finer nuances of our footballing vocabulary: to refer to an opponent’s ‘cheating’ had become politically incorrect. Except, of course, in relation to foreigners (defined as non-English players who made their living outside the Premier League) such as Deco before he joined Chelsea for a spell.