Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner

by Patrick Barclay

  He was then interviewed on Match of the Day after the title-celebration match against Charlton at Stamford Bridge. The opening shot was of Mourinho smiling. The interviewer, Ivan Gaskell, began:

  ‘Chelsea gave you plenty to smile about this season.’

  ‘Yes [Mourinho chuckled], but I’m a special guy, you know …’

  ‘I’ve heard that somewhere before …’

  ‘No, not in that way. Special guy in another way, you know.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’m not one hundred per cent happy with the season. I’m a bit disappointed. I would like to play in the Champions League final. I was very convinced of that, and people like me, when we don’t reach our targets, I think we suffer more than … people who are happy with a few things.’

  ‘Room for improvement, then?’

  ‘It’s not easy to improve a squad of champions, but we can improve a little bit. The supporters will have to try to improve. To support more the team, like some clubs in this country when they play at home.’

  ‘And the press? Improve them too?’

  ‘I think it’s impossible to change.’

  He did not look like a disappointed man. His smile was not so much broad as deep. It belied the pensiveness of his sentiments. But – and here the words of our psychoanalyst friend of a friend resound – Mourinho was not really trying to communicate with us. He was starting to condition his players for the next season (they seemed to get the message and responded with a superb win at Old Trafford three days later). And he was reminding the supporters that they, too, had been beaten by Liverpool.

  Mourinho, according to his old university lecturer Manuel Sérgio, is ‘the ultimate post-modern coach’ and, while that is almost self-evidently overblown, there could be no argument with the view that the intellectual level of coaching in England had been raised by his presence. But post-modern? The global concept of coaching is not unique to Mourinho by any means, even if he and his staff have interpreted it brilliantly. He was not the first to play mind games, even if he was such a master of the dark arts that the Chelsea team went through the Barcelona and Bayern Munich episodes believing UEFA were victimising them, and the opposition players – Barcelona’s at any rate – being disrespectful. ‘He really did create a siege mentality,’ one player told me. But no; that could have been Ferguson. I tended to the view that Mourinho had not so much taken the coach’s role on to a new level as put an exceptional amount of work into it. Even some of his best friends would concede that his outstanding qualities (the extraordinary charisma apart) were organisation and mental effort. ‘Post-modern?’ smiled one. ‘You must remember that Manuel Sérgio is a philosopher.’

  We had observed how Mourinho went about the job. We had learned how this extraordinary coach was formed. What we did not know is how long his success would endure. And where he would go once the Chelsea project matured. At that stage it was tempting to believe that he would go nowhere. After all, his great rivals Ferguson and Wenger were long-serving managers. On the other hand, it was hard to see Mourinho as the dynastic type. The only hints at to what his future might hold were that Italian hankering and a more firm ambition to lead the national team of the country of his birth. He told Andy Roxburgh: ‘I would not like to retire without having been coach of Portugal.’ And explained to the Portuguese newspaper A Bola: ‘I want to do something that is for everybody. I want to help them be, one day, a little bit happier.’ He spoke of how important a single international appearance had been for his father and added: ‘My career as a coach will only make sense when, in a few years, I have the opportunity to train the national squad.’

  During his visit to Tel Aviv in March 2005, he put a rough timescale on it. ‘I want to work for another thirteen years,’ he said, ‘and one thing is compulsory to me. I want to be manager of Portugal – when I want it. I want to manage my country for maybe two or four years, at a World Cup or European Championship. That leaves eleven or nine years in my career and I see myself staying in English football until then.’ Unless, he added after the season had finished, an opportunity arose to try a club in Italy at some stage (that bit was to come true when he joined Internazionale). But the resolve to lead Portugal’s national team remained fundamental.

  What, though, would Mourinho be doing after all that, when, at the age of fifty-five, having stepped down as Portugal’s coach following their success in the 2018 World Cup – perhaps the trophy would have been lifted by their ageing captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, once of Manchester United and Real Madrid – he retires? Would he be content to sit reading on one of the beaches near Setúbal? Maybe for a month or two. But my guess is that, long in advance, he would have explored other avenues. Broader avenues than football could provide.

  While the Barcelona controversy was raging, Mourinho – as if to demonstrate that there was no such thing as bad publicity – became the new face of American Express in Europe and Asia. ‘Why Asia?’ he asked the people from the credit-card company, who told him he was as much an icon there as in Europe. He found that interesting and the trip to Israel, too, appeared to capture his imagination. ‘When I have retired,’ he said in Tel Aviv, ‘when, in thirteen more years, I have finished with football, I can see myself one hundred per cent involved in human actions. I have always thought about problems in the Middle East and Africa, not just about football.’ He had often denied any interest in politics, by which we could presume he meant party politics, but there would surely be something to suit his talents at the United Nations. He had, after all, proved he could unite dressing rooms. But this was for the future too and many a football man had toyed with ideas of harnessing his power only to have second thoughts when the tiresome details of life in the slow lane become evident.

  Mourinho went off for his 2005 summer holidays – the family made a beeline for Setúbal – around the time that England celebrated the eightieth wedding anniversary of Percy and Florence Arrowsmith, who were said to be the world’s longest-married couple. Asked for any advice she could give people anxious to emulate the success of her relationship with Percy, the senior partner at 105, Florence, aged 100, replied: ‘Never be afraid to say sorry.’ Meanwhile Anders Frisk, a fugitive from a murkier world than the Arrowsmiths’, was in Sweden watching his daughter ride her horse and his sons play football in the time his duties for an insurance company left free. A Champions League referee only four months earlier, his heart set on a career climax at the 2006 World Cup (for which he had already been invited by FIFA to train), Frisk now had no official involvement in football bar the education of young referees. Privately, declining countless interview requests, he awaited some sign of regret from Mourinho for the consequences, however unintended, of the Chelsea coach’s questioning of his integrity in the Camp Nou. Mourinho’s life had, of course, changed too. ‘Especially my family life,’ he had said. And I wondered how the Mourinhos would spend the days leading to their second festive season in London. Maybe José and Matilde would take their two children ice-skating in the little square off the King’s Road and be like any other happy family, their eyes shining under the Christmas lights and oblivious to the darkness beyond.

  The mixture as before

  The selective myopia of José Mourinho continued through his second successful year as Chelsea coach. As he and his family celebrated their second Christmas in England – there was no skating off the King’s Road now, for they had moved to Surrey – his team were in their familiar place at the top of the Premier League. Nor were Chelsea seriously challenged. They had won each of their first nine matches and, although the concession of two points at Everton had been followed by a 1–0 defeat at Manchester United, few observers harboured the slightest doubt that Mourinho would again end the English season with a magnum of champagne in his hands. Yet this time, for all that Chelsea secured the title in the most satisfactory manner with a resounding 3–0 victory over Sir Alex Ferguson’s United at Stamford Bridge, there was to be a sour taste on his lips.

&nb
sp; In an extraordinary press conference after the match, Mourinho began by saying how nice it was for the team to have become champions again in front of the mass of their own supporters rather than only the diehard travellers who had obtained tickets for Bolton a year earlier. He even pleased and amused the journalists with his explanation of why, having been presented with his medal on the pitch, he hurled it – along with his jacket – into the crowd in the Matthew Harding Stand: ‘I think the people behind that goal are the best supporters we have. One of the reasons we are champions is that we have a good record at home and they are a part of that, so I wanted to share the moment with them. The person who got the medal is a lucky guy. He has a great souvenir.’ Mourinho paused briefly and, smiling, added: ‘Or he can go on eBay and make a fortune!’ No sooner had the laughter subsided than Mourinho was changing mood. Using a glass of water on the table in front of him to illustrate a brief lecture on economics, he declared: ‘In this country, where people see only coins and pounds and transfer fees, this is the worst club to be a manager. Because to win is never enough.’ And then he got to the nub of his discontent. ‘I won nine consecutive matches at the start of the Premier League season and, after that, I won a lot of other matches. Yet I was never Manager of the Month. Not once!’ Because of the lack of appreciation this signified, Mourinho implied, he had considered quitting a couple of times during the season. Having let this unexpected shower fall on Chelsea’s parade, he was off – with barely a mention of any of the players who had made club history (though he did generously express a hope that Wayne Rooney, who had fractured a foot during the match, would recover in time for the forthcoming World Cup in Germany).

  At first it did strike us as odd that he had not picked up at least one or two of the monthly awards, which are made by the Premier League’s sponsors, Barclays, after due consideration by a panel of several dozen representatives of sections of the game including managers, supporters, television and radio commentators and journalists, of whom I am one. But then I thought back to the voting process. At the end of the first month of the season, for example, the main candidates were Mourinho and Paul Jewell of Wigan Athletic, whose team had just been promoted yet were playing splendidly (even Mourinho had sportingly admitted they were unlucky to lose to Chelsea on the opening day). The race was close, but some of us took into account the disparity in background and resources between Wigan and Chelsea: after all, we reasoned, if the award were given on the basis of results alone, a computer could do it, making our deliberations redundant.

  When I mentioned this the following day on the Sky television programme Jimmy Hill’s Sunday Supplement, my colleague Brian Woolnough of the Daily Star disclosed that he had instigated a forceful post-match exchange of words at Stamford Bridge with Simon Greenberg, the director of communications, who had loyally defended Mourinho from the accusation that, in appearing to elevate his own petty peevishness over the achievements of his players, he had done the club a disservice – and not for the first time. I thought Woolnough’s point a good one. By now, surely, the familiar argument that Mourinho’s moans and groans and outrageous allegations were no more than a diversionary tactic calculated to take the pressure off his players had been discredited; what pressure could the players possibly have been under once the last title available to them in the season, the Premier League, had been won? Chelsea may have fallen short in the Champions League, losing in the first knockout round to Barcelona, who avenged their defeat the previous season on merit despite Mourinho’s risible claims that a theatrical fall by the brilliant teenager Lionel Messi had caused the dismissal of Asier del Horno at the Bridge. They may have paid for Mourinho’s employment of a strange formation in the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool by missing out on an opportunity of the domestic double. But in the Premier League they had once again been the best, leaving no room for argument.

  In the build-up to United’s visit, Sir Alex Ferguson had been making much of his team’s late surge and growling that Chelsea could expect more of a struggle for the title in the next campaign. And he was to be proved right there. The response from Mourinho’s players on this occasion, however, was a majestic triumph, rounded off with glorious goals from Joe Cole and Ricardo Carvalho. So much, they seemed to be saying, for the closing of the gap. Chelsea lost their two remaining matches – characteristically, Mourinho complained about the referees having one law for Chelsea and one for the rest – but it was time to salute their consistency. All season they had dropped a mere two points at home; indeed they had never lost at home in the Premier League in two years under Mourinho (whose personal run was only just beginning). They were a team of unrivalled efficiency. So, after half a century without a championship, Chelsea had two in a row.

  ‘Consecutive’ – that is how Mourinho described his titles as he savoured them. Consecutive. He had this new word of which he made all the more proud use because he, personally, had four in a row, if you included the pair he had picked up in Portugal – which he made sure you did. The efficacy of his methods had survived the improvement in United’s performances and rumoured discontent among the players. I did not take the latter too seriously; it was inevitable that some players would be unhappy when left out.

  To give Mourinho his due, he did not appear to favour his own buys in matters of team selection. Among those to suffer were Del Horno and one of the more expensive purchases, Shaun Wright-Phillips, although the midfielder Michael Essien, to whom Mourinho had switched in the summer of 2005 after Steven Gerrard had finally, at the eleventh hour, decided to stay at Liverpool, settled into English football quickly. Mourinho also kept faith in Drogba. A sometimes surly fellow, unpopular even with many Chelsea supporters due to his propensity for falling to the ground and staying there, he was widely pilloried in the media, but proved his worth towards the end of the season and went on to cross the boundaries of greatness. He left Stamford Bridge in 2012 having scored the goals – a majestically headed equaliser and a shoot-out penalty – that brought Chelsea the Champions League title in Munich. But back to 2006. Wright-Phillips, whom Sven-Göran Eriksson left out of England’s World Cup squad, went off for his holidays perhaps wishing he had stayed at Manchester City, or at least left them for Arsenal rather than Chelsea. Tiago, meanwhile, had been obliged to move to Essien’s erstwhile club at Lyon in order to revive his career. His compatriot Maniche, having rejoined Mourinho in mid-season, hardly became the toast of all London.

  So Mourinho completed his second year supreme in terms of winning Premier League matches but with a dubious record in the transfer market: certainly not one to compare with Sir Alex Ferguson at his peak, let alone Arsène Wenger.

  Mourinho’s principal talents clearly lay in other directions. Tactically, for instance, his countless triumphs outweighed the occasional disaster and Chelsea’s ninth victory of that opening burst was a classic. Having let Bolton take the lead through Stelios at the Bridge, they went in for the interval to discover that Mourinho had devised an enterprising substitution. Off went the left-back, Del Horno, on went an extra attacker, Eidur Gudjohnsen, and a 3–3–4 formation produced four goals in the space of nine minutes – two each from Drogba and Frank Lampard – before Gudjohnsen rounded off a 5–1 triumph. Crisis? What crisis? True, an eventful spell had also featured the dismissal for handball of the visiting defender Ricardo Gardner, but tactical boldness had been rewarded and afterwards Bolton’s manager, Sam Allardyce, gave credit where it was due. ‘José Mourinho is a major, major asset for Chelsea,’ he opined. ‘For however long he is here, they can stay at the top and match Manchester United’s dominance.’ At West Ham a couple of months later, Chelsea were drawing when Mourinho sent on Hernan Crespo, who scored within a minute. There were plenty of other cases of substitutes scoring for Chelsea. When a club’s bench regularly contains talent with a total value exceeding £50 million, it is bound to help. But, as always with Mourinho, you had to remember Porto, where his use of less exalted substitutes was already highly skilled. After the
defeat at Manchester United, where Darren Fletcher’s looping header earned the then maligned Scottish midfield player a brief bask in the warmth of hero-worship, Chelsea went three months without losing. And then, suddenly, they were beaten 3–0 at Middlesbrough, a strange team capable of routing the best in England (United and Arsenal also fell on Teesside) and reaching the UEFA Cup final but not, apparently, of finishing in the top half of the Premier League.

  At the end of the season, having taken fourteenth place, Middlesbrough bade farewell to their manager, Steve McClaren, who succeeded Eriksson as England coach. The Football Association took more than three months to make up their minds on the succession. You might have thought that, even if they were unsure about McClaren’s part-time work by Eriksson’s side over the previous five years, the outwitting of Mourinho, Wenger and Ferguson in the same season would have swung them over more quickly. But then it is not always just the coach who affects the fortunes of a team and, in this context, Chelsea provide a good illustration in the case of Mourinho’s captain, John Terry.

  Once again, he had exerted a massive influence on the season. The Middlesbrough shock was followed by defeats at home to Barcelona and away – albeit not far away – at Fulham. Three losses in eight matches: by Chelsea’s standards, that nearly did add up to a crisis. Their lead in the Premier League had been cut from seventeen points to seven and on 9 April, Palm Sunday – the day Mourinho had erroneously forecast they might make sure of the title – they had West Ham again, at the Bridge. They lost a goal – to James Collins – and then a man, when Maniche was sent off. Yet Chelsea hit back with four goals – from Drogba, Crespo, Terry and Gallas – and in the Daily Telegraph the next day Alan Hansen praised Terry’s performance as the perfect answer to those rumours about the dressing room. ‘Whenever things were going badly for me as Liverpool captain,’ he candidly recalled, ‘I wanted to get off the pitch as soon as possible. You could never call me a great captain. But Terry is a great captain. He has obviously said to himself, “Let’s get this sorted”, and yesterday he was a giant among men. Normally, if the captain is a centre-back, you would expect him to display either battling qualities or composure. Terry possesses both of those qualities in abundance.’ He was the kind of inspirational figure towards whom a team could look in times of adversity. And from that moment United knew their pursuit of the champions would be in vain.