Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner

by Patrick Barclay

  So that surge of power that Robson talked about, that licence to insult that distinction in sport affords, had carried Mourinho over the line once or twice. But it did not make him a bad person.

  Different class

  Now a guessing game. See how many clues you need. Our man is a bright and ambitious coach who came to England in the summer of 2004 having just won European silverware. He joined one of the Premier League’s biggest clubs and, upon being introduced to the squad, laid down some principles. He insisted that the players must behave as a unit both on and off the field. They must eat together, for instance, and stay at the table until the last man has finished, in order to prevent the formation of cliques. No player could place himself above the team or act like a star. ‘The team,’ he declared, ‘is the star.’ Having followed these instructions, they had a dramatically successful first season under his command. He was Rafael Benítez. But it might have been José Mourinho, because most coaches espouse the same notions, by and large. Few, so far as I am aware, encourage their players to develop laziness, selfish individualism or wilful disobedience.

  The differences between Benítez and Mourinho were matters of emphasis or personality and these might be connected with each other. Take their respective attitudes towards mind games: disdain in one case (at least until Sir Alex Ferguson got under his skin in January 2009 and he responded with a list of ‘facts’), keen relish in the other. So naturally the past managers with whom Mourinho has been compared are the larger-than-life characters, above all Brian Clough. Yet, according to one of Clough’s key players at Nottingham Forest, their ways of going about the job could scarcely be more contrasting. Frank Clark was brought to Nottingham almost as soon as Clough arrived, from Newcastle United, where he had been captain. He was thirty-one and dropping a division and could not even have dreamed he would be a European champion when his career ended in a haze of champagne four years later. But it happened. Forest were promoted in his second season, champions of England the next season and champions of Europe the season after that. They were to retain the European title, too, after Clark had retired and been replaced by Frank Gray. In the league table of footballing fairy tales, then, Clough’s Forest will always stand above even Mourinho’s Porto.

  The decades which separate the careers of Clough and Mourinho are partly responsible for the contrast. ‘Mourinho obviously studies the opposition in great detail,’ said Clark. ‘He spends hour after hour preparing his team for their next opponents, if necessary changing tactics from game to game. Brian hardly considered the opposition. He used just to tell us to play our game, a simple 4–4–2, because that was what we knew best. A lot more thought goes into the game today. But Brian, if he were around now, would probably be sticking to his philosophy.’ Yet Clough was utterly unorthodox in other respects. Could you imagine Mourinho ordering the coach driver to pull off the M62 on the way to Liverpool and having him unload crates of beer intended for the post-match celebration? Then inviting his players to have a couple of drinks just a few hours before the kick-off? Yet Clough did that. Forest, 2–0 up from the home leg of their European Champions’ Cup first-round tie against the holders, came away with a scoreless draw that night and went on to beat Malmö in the final. ‘You had to be something truly special to get away with such ways of managing people,’ said Clark, ‘and Brian was, quite simply, a genius. There is, though, something of Brian in Mourinho’s personality: the total belief in what he’s doing and the fact that he’s not afraid to voice an opinion.’

  Few, since Clough, have made such an astonishing impact on the European game as Mourinho. Within two and a half years of going solo, he had won the UEFA Cup and a year later his Porto were champions of the continent. Clough rose swiftly enough. But he had six years at Derby, where he also won the domestic title and guided his side to the Champions’ Cup semi-finals (they lost to Juventus), before working his miracles at Nottingham. In terms of triumphant entrances to the top-level coaching scene, it is hard to find challengers for Mourinho. One would be Fabio Capello, whose Milan secured the Italian title in each of his first three years and celebrated the hat-trick with a quite magnificent Champions League final victory over Barcelona in 1994. But Capello had been at Milan for a long time, favoured by the patronage of Silvio Berlusconi, allowed to study under Arrigo Sacchi, prepared for the succession. There are not too many convincing candidates for comparison with the sudden rise of Mourinho. Rafael Benítez is one of the few – in four seasons he won the Spanish title twice and the UEFA Cup with Valencia and the Champions League with Liverpool – but at least the Spaniard had an apprenticeship. It remains to be seen whether Mourinho can emulate Capello in maintaining his standard for fifteen years. But if Mourinho does pass the test of such a span of time, you can be sure we shall hear plenty about it.

  The 250 Israeli and Palestinian coaches who took diligent notes of his ninety-five-minute lecture in Tel Aviv in February 2005 might, however, have been wasting their time, in the sense that only Mourinho could make his methods work as they did: while words such as ‘faith’ and ‘unity’ are easy enough to say, they are difficult to translate into medals. Only the special ones can make their players grow.

  Few men in English football have observed more than Peter Robinson, who, in over thirty-five years as secretary, chief executive and finally vice-chairman of Liverpool, shared in just about every form of triumph the English and European games had to offer. When Robinson joined the club in 1965, the manager was Bill Shankly, a Scot with cropped hair and a fanatical devotion to his team. ‘Bill was probably as close as anyone to Mourinho in style,’ Robinson told me, ‘and yet he was completely different in one way. He was never boastful about himself. Only about his players. He would never have said he was a European champion. He would have said his players were. But Mourinho has the same talent for inspiration. Bill could certainly convince the players they were better than they were. By sheer enthusiasm and presence, he could make them feel superior, even though they knew in their hearts they were not. Intelligent lads like Brian Hall used to speak about it in tones of wonder for years afterwards. They were bewitched. That’s probably the best word for it.’ When Shankly came to Anfield from Huddersfield in December 1959, Liverpool were languishing in the second division. By the time he retired in 1974, they had won the English title on three occasions, the FA Cup twice and the UEFA Cup – and a platform had been built on which four European Champions’ Cups were to be placed by Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan’s sides in the space of eight years.

  During much of Shankly’s success, the captain was Emlyn Hughes, whom he not so much requested as demanded the board buy from Blackpool. ‘I’ve never known Bill so insistent on having a player,’ said Robinson. ‘Shankly adored Emlyn and Emlyn adored him and that seemed to be the case with Mourinho and John Terry at Chelsea. The manager’s drive was always carried on to the field.’ How it was instilled was more difficult to define, but Robinson agreed that a film-star presence was another common factor between Mourinho and Shankly. ‘Bill, with his haircut and the way he wore his clothes, did have an air of James Cagney, who was still prominent on the screen in those days,’ said Robinson, ‘though the respect in which his players held him was mainly due to his knowledge of football and one hundred per cent devotion to it.’

  Desmond Morris recalled Shankly: ‘He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he was charismatic. I met Bob Paisley once at Anfield – and he might have been the chap who looked after the boots. But Shankly had an extraordinary presence. Similar to Mourinho’s. If you asked me who would be in the same category as Mourinho, I’d say Shankly and Clough. He has Clough’s unpredictability.’ Although Clough had a singular way of addressing people – ‘he called them “young man”, regardless of their age, in order to establish seniority’ – Mourinho, too, could hold our attention. ‘You hang on his words. He says things which are relevant and thought-provoking. He avoids clichés. He hasn’t fallen into the slovenly “at the end of the day, that’s what it’s
all about” mentality. He doesn’t reach for a hackneyed phrase to get him off the hook. When Mourinho is asked a question, he thinks about the answer. Other managers have made an impression on the country over the years – not just Clough but Tommy Docherty and more recently Alex Ferguson – but I found myself watching all Chelsea matches just because of Mourinho. After one away match, he ordered the players to throw their shirts in the visiting fans’ section. He just put a hand on his chest and jiggled his coat – obviously he’d told them to do it in advance and was reminding them. He’s always coming up with something new – and surprises are attractive.’

  One surprise was his professed adherence to a trait associated with Shankly: in the middle of the 2004–05 season, while Arjen Robben was out of action, Mourinho declared that he gave no thought to injured players. ‘I don’t want to think about Arjen Robben,’ he said. ‘I really don’t. I think the best way to face an injury to a very important player is to forget him. I don’t speak with him. He is in the medical department. When they tell me he is ready to start work with the technical staff, even if he is not a hundred per cent, we shall welcome him with open arms. When my fitness coach says he is ready to play, I will jump for joy. But at the moment I don’t want to think about him. I have to support and motivate the others and I would never offer Arjen Robben as an excuse for something. We have the players and we want to work with them.’ Shankly operated on the same principles, and although his cold-shouldering of casualties could appear almost heartless – he could hardly look them in the eye – the morale of those available to the cause as their deputies was considered the priority. It was seldom found wanting.

  The mind games played with referees or rivals in Shankly’s time were never as hard-edged as Mourinho’s – and played in private, by and large – while Clough considered referee-baiting or even dissent taboo. ‘There were two reasons for this,’ said Frank Clark. ‘One, Brian thought that was the right way to go about it; and, two, he thought we might get a better response from them if we treated them like human beings.’ Trevor Francis, for whom Clough broke the British transfer record in paying Birmingham nearly £1 million in 1979, said: ‘The first thing you were told when you came to the club was never to be involved with referees and I think most of the refs around at that time would say we were a pleasure to handle.’ Given that they twice brought the European title back to Nottingham, which remains the smallest town ever to receive the honour, it did not appear to do Forest a great deal of harm. Just as Mourinho has his beliefs, so did Clough, and it is too early to compare their efficacy. In moral terms, there can be no comparison. Whatever Mourinho may contemplate at Fatima.

  Whatever next?

  After the 2004–05 season had drawn to a close and the open-topped buses had been returned to their garages, there was a pause to reflect on Chelsea and how far the voyage of discovery might take them. Clearly it would depend on the man at the helm. By whom I mean José Mourinho. The requirement from Roman Abramovich was quite simple: he had to remain enthusiastic and ridiculously rich. Over the season, Abramovich’s billions (as estimated by the media) had kept growing. We of modest means were bewildered by this. Did they not have taxation in Russia? Or was Abramovich benefiting from some form of relief for small businesses? It was beyond us. All we understood, in those days when Financial Fairplay was no more than a gleam in the eye of Michel Platini and those destined to assist him with the UEFA presidency, was that Chelsea would continue to have the biggest player budget in football. Which would entitle them to behave like the biggest club in the world and try to outbid the longer recognised giants from Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Manchester whenever a major talent became available. This was just the start, Mourinho had trumpeted after Chelsea had won the English championship for the first time in fifty years. So where would it all end?

  Back in February 2005, a few days before Chelsea went to Cardiff to collect their first trophy under Mourinho, he told us his new team might not peak until his third season in charge. He might have been buying time – it is something coaches do, as Mourinho has scornfully remarked, in order to protect themselves from failure – but he explained his timetable fully. Because the gathering of journalists had been called in advance of the trip to Barcelona, he had been asked about the Champions League and, in particular, whether Chelsea at that stage were better equipped for it than his triumphant Porto of the previous season. ‘We have better players,’ he said, ‘but Porto last year were a better team from the tactical point of view – because it was my third year with them. They knew everything I knew! They knew how to adapt just like this [he clicked his fingers]. They could change from system to system. I could start the game with 4–3–3, switch to 4–4–2, change back to 4–3–3. I could press high, put the block low.’ But he had been at Chelsea only a matter of months. ‘When we get to my third or fourth year, we can say this will be my best Chelsea team. So my contract with Chelsea is the right length.’ It had a four-year span then. Now, as well as being more lucrative, it had been extended by a year. Complications in his relationship with Abramovich, however, were to ruin the timetable and upset his plans for the medium term.

  Even back in the February of his first season in England, he had been looking forward to a long pre-season in which to prepare for the second. Pre-season is an important time and Mourinho had gone virtually straight from Porto into his first at Chelsea, which had been further affected by comings and goings among the squad in the aftermath of the 2004 European Championship. In February 2005 he was thinking beyond the securing of his first title in England to a proper pre-season, saying, ‘I shall be working on things I don’t want to work on now. Things must be done in phases and you cannot skip a phase. You have to do one after the other.’ He was talking tactics and I asked if they had become more important than individual talent; the issue was topical after the triumphs of Porto and, at the European Championship, Greece. He replied: ‘Although it is true that football is becoming more tactical, the fantastic player will always be able to decide a game with a piece of brilliance. And, if you have better players, you can have a better tactical organisation, because they are more intelligent, they understand the game better. It’s just a question of whether they want to work for the team. Sometimes big players, if they won’t work for the team, fail and smaller players with very good tactical organisation succeed. When you have both, you have the ideal.’

  All the indications of his first season were that Mourinho’s ability to organise and motivate a team had survived the step up in individual class. Petr ech, Claude Makelele, Frank Lampard and Arjen Robben were arguably the world’s leading players in their positions. John Terry and Damien Duff would have made it to many shortlists. Eidur Gudjohnsen could be said almost to have invented a role for himself; especially in the second half of the season, he had played beautifully. Joe Cole had fulfilled his potential. Yet the roll-call tells its own story. The majority of the squad had already been assembled by the club when Mourinho came. He merely fitted in the Portuguese trio and Didier Drogba (and the athletic Ivorian’s hit-and-miss spells were, however temporarily, to place a question mark against Mourinho’s judgement). Furthermore, Mourinho had had to hoist Chelsea just one place up the Premier League table to make them champions. But it could not be denied: an improvement of fifteen points since the departure of Claudio Ranieri was conclusive and, if this and the Carling Cup constituted only a start, the mind boggled at the thought of where Chelsea might be when he was finished with them.

  In the summer of 2004, when Mourinho boarded Roman Abramovich’s yacht for the meeting that was to culminate in his signing of that original contract, he was informed that the intention was to build the world’s number-one football club. But Mourinho had created the odd hostage to fortune. Soon after meeting Abramovich he was shown a list that had been prepared for the Russian of top players from around the world and asked which he wanted. He rejected them one by one – the lot. It is reasonable to suppose that the list included Wayne Rooney,
and Mourinho explained to the press that Chelsea had declined to challenge Manchester United for the teenager’s signature ‘because we already have players for that position’. Did he mean Drogba? And the little-used (and later sold to Atlético Madrid) Mateja Kežman? He may, even then, have been beginning to regret one element of this otherwise impressive declaration of independence on footballing matters.

  There was no reason to believe, at that stage, that he would seek to leave Chelsea. He told fellow coaches. He told the Portuguese press: ‘Nobody can give me a better championship, a better club, a better squad, better players, a better city, a country more passionate for football – nobody can give me a stadium completely full like I have here.’ It was a sure sign of the years he spent with Sir Bobby Robson: he was speaking in lists. And the midseason rumours of his flirtation with the idea of a move to Italy were never truly convincing. When he signed his enhanced contract, after the Champions League semi-final defeat at Liverpool had provided a moment’s breather, he said something which, coming from the lips of such an avowed family man, carried far greater resonance than the mid-season hints: ‘There is now no doubt that our lives are in London and that is important for my children.’