Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner

by Patrick Barclay

  Why had he begun to talk about his own career? I came to the conclusion that he would not mind my informing the readers of The Times. After all, such material, even if it were intended to address the inspiration of Ferguson, would hardly have kept for a biography not due to be published until the autumn of 2010 (by which time he had indeed left Inter, albeit not for England but for Spain and the challenge of a fourth league). The Times used my piece on its front page and, naturally, it caused even more of a stir in Italy than England. Within hours, Mourinho had issued a statement to the effect that he had not spoken to any newspaper but to the author of a book. I could only confirm this. But he didn’t seem too put out. The theme persisted and in the January he felt obliged to clear things up: ‘Yes, I love English football and the idea of going back to live in England. I want to go back and will do one day – that’s 100 per cent certain. But I have no idea when that will be. Anyway, I would never leave a job half-fulfilled.’ He didn’t require the full span of a contract lasting until 2012 – and by now worth an estimated £10 million a year – to finish the job. That European title was just four months away.

  It was amusing to recall on the glorious night, as the Bernabéu turned an exultant blue and black, that when we had met back in November, during the international break, Mourinho had received a text message from Ferguson, whose United were strolling through their Champions League group, already qualified with two matches to spare and unaware of the threat Bayern would later pose. ‘Do you fancy meeting in Madrid in May?’ it concluded. Mourinho made the date. Ferguson didn’t, though his time was to come in London a year later, when now Mourinho missed the bus. Not that Ferguson can have greatly enjoyed his ride on it, for United were subjected to the most magnificent annihilation by the Barcelona of Pep Guardiola.

  Wesley, you look tired

  Outside the Bernabéu on the night Inter became champions of Europe, there had been a telling scene. The engine of the team bus was ticking over, throbbing as the team waited to be taken for their celebratory meal. They had a more important matter on their minds for, after Zanetti had presented Mourinho with his captain’s armband, a plea to stay and ‘continue our battles’ was handed over on behalf of everyone. Mourinho, much moved, walked off the bus and was ushered into a car, which had taken him only a few yards when it stopped. He had spotted the lone figure of the tall Materazzi, his white top brilliant against the wall on which he leant next to the bus. Mourinho went to the veteran defender and, as they tenderly embraced, Mourinho confirmed that he would be leaving. ‘What am I to do?’ asked Materazzi. ‘Retire? After you, I can’t have another coach.’ Mourinho gently eased away. He was in tears. ‘Keep calm, José,’ said a solicitous Frits Ahlstrom, the UEFA liaison officer, leading him off to another round of media work.

  And yet Materazzi (who no more retired, of course, than Didier Drogba left Chelsea in the wake of Mourinho) had become just a squad player, as his cameo appearance in the final had emphasised. The whole squad were to miss Mourinho, and so badly that his successor, Rafael Benítez, whose time at Liverpool had expired at the end of the 2009–10 season, lasted only a few months. The Spaniard was sacked two days before Christmas and replaced by Leonardo, the former Milan coach. No longer did Sneijder, Milito and company carry all before them, though they had survived the Champions League group stage despite a sound defeat at Tottenham. In Serie A, they trailed a long way behind Milan.

  Sneijder, along with Lucio and Maicon, were able to take a couple of January days off to attend the Ballon d’Or ceremony in Zurich, where they were named in FIFA’s team of the year. Coach of the Year was Mourinho, who sat in the audience as Sneijder declared: ‘For me it was an amazing year. It could have been better – because I wanted to win the World Cup – but first of all it was a pleasure to work with José Mourinho, and I want to tell him this on stage, that he is for me the best coach in the world.’ Mourinho swallowed and once again his eyes were moist. An insight into the special relationship between Mourinho and players had earlier been given by Sneijder when he said: ‘Once he told me “Wesley, you look tired, take some days off, go to the sun with your wife and daughter.” All other coaches just talked about training, but he sent me to the beach. So I went to Ibiza for three days and, when I was back, I was ready to kill and die for him.’ Even Zlatan Ibrahimovic, after he had left for Barcelona, said that: ‘At Inter with José Mourinho, I could go out and kill for him – that was the motivation he gave me.’

  Without it, Inter were just another Serie A team in the Champions League knockout stages: beatable. They were removed in the quarter-finals by Schalke, the midtable German side running up a 7–3 aggregate score that was made to look even less flattering to Inter when Manchester United then strolled to a 2–0 victory over Schalke in Gelsenkirchen before Ferguson brought in his squad players for an equally comfortable 4–1 win at Old Trafford. Mourinho meanwhile, was doing his enemy-of-football routine as Real Madrid lost to Barcelona. Some observers thought he had thereby ruled himself out of the United job when Ferguson retired. Others, noting the Ferguson antics that had brought the Scot a five-match dugout suspension by the FA, might have believed him more appropriately qualified than ever.

  One in the eye for Barca

  Seven days after Manchester United and Manchester City raised the curtain on the 2011–12 season in England with a Community Shield match hailed as the most enjoyable in memory, Real Madrid and Barcelona put it in sober context during Spain’s equivalent, the Supercopa. And, as if one more leg of the unfailingly unmissable Clasico drama were not enough, La Liga’s giants did it again in the return meeting at Camp Nou a few days later, this time accompanying the football’s thrilling climax with a brawl in which Mourinho took part, poking a finger in the eye of Tito Vilanova, Pep Guardiola’s assistant and successor-to-be. Another season, another reason, for making whoopee; the same old song – it had become irresistible. And without the discordant duet of Mourinho and Guardiola it would hardly have been the same.

  True, there was the traditional rivalry of the clubs, with its historical, socio-political and emotional dimensions. There was their scale. There was the quality epitomised by Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, those pocket miracles at the heart of a Barcelona side which had proclaimed its candidature for best ever to represent a club with the previous season’s displays against Real, above all the 5–0 triumph in La Liga, and Manchester United in the Champions League final at Wembley little more than a couple of months earlier. There was the allure of once again comparing Lionel Messi, the world’s leading player of the moment beyond question, with Cristiano Ronaldo, whose 40 league goals the previous season had confirmed his right to have a place reserved in the Bernabéu pantheon, even if thus far he had won just a Copa del Rey medal with that characteristically formidable header past Victor Valdés in extra time. But the clash of style and philosophy enacted by Mourinho and Guardiola took Real Madrid versus Barcelona beyond anything we had seen before in terms of football as theatre.

  There was, of course, plenty more to come in a season that was to culminate in Mourinho’s vindication. Having warmed up for the campaign with defeat and disgrace (Messi clinched the Supercopa for Barcelona just before the trouble that spread to the technical area), he ended it a champion once more, joining the company of the three coaches who had earned national titles in four countries. Ernst Happel (Feyenoord, Bruges, Hamburg, Tirol), with whom Mourinho already shared the honour of European titles with two clubs, was one, Tomislav Ivi (Hajduk Split, Ajax, Anderlecht, Porto) and Giovanni Trappatoni ( Juventus and Inter, Bayern Munich, Benfica, Salzburg) the others. Mourinho had done it all inside a decade.

  He prepared Real for the season during a tour that began in Los Angeles and took in such diverse venues as Guangzhou and Leicester. Every match was won. After LA Galaxy (4–1), Guadalajara of Mexico (3–0) and Philadelphia Union (2–1) had been dealt with in California, there was a flight to Berlin, where Hertha were beaten 3–1. Then came Leicester City (2–1) and a further change o
f continent. In China, Real pledged commitment to a partnership in the biggest country’s biggest football academy before beating Guangzhou Evergrande 7–1. They administered a further thrashing to Tianjin Teda (6–0) before coming home. There was a week in which to get ready for the Supercopa first leg.

  After Mesut Özil delighted the Bernabéu by putting Real in front, David Villa and Messi retaliated with interest. Xabi Alonso equalised. At Camp Nou, Iniesta struck first. Ronaldo responded. Messi made it 2–1, Karim Benzema 2–2. Messi scored late, and such was Real’s frustration that Marcelo, their exciting but excitable attacking full-back, was shown a straight red card for a horrible challenge on Cesc Fàbregas. The ensuing scenes involved not just Mourinho’s jab at Vilanova but further red cards for Villa and Özil. The Spanish disciplinary authorities were as resolute as ever in dealing with Real, who could hardly deny being the main culprits. Mourinho’s two-match ban would have been light for the offence even if he had no previous form. He was also fined 600 euros, while Real were levied the even more breathtaking sum of 180 euros, which would hardly have paid for a good seat at the match.

  The Spanish game is not Europe’s most impressively led. For decades the authorities have cocked a deaf ear to racial abuse among crowds – England players were infamously subjected to it in Madrid as recently as 2004 – and at that time, in August 2011, the consequences of their habit of turning a blind eye to financial mismanagement were felt as the start of the Liga season was delayed by a strike of players protesting over unpaid wages at various clubs. Real finally kicked off with a 6–0 win at Zaragoza. Ronaldo got a hat-trick. The pattern was set. Ronaldo was injured in September and Real, having lost to Levante, stumbled again in drawing with Racing Santander. Ronaldo returned with another hat-trick, this time in a 6–2 home win over Rayo Vallecano. Gonzalo Higuaín picked up the hat-trick habit; his competition with Benzema for a place was proving as creative as Mourinho could have wished.

  In Europe, despite Mourinho’s absence due to suspension, Real won each of their first three matches (against Dinamo Zagreb, Ajax and Lyon). They also won the three that followed his return to the technical area. Everything went to plan at home and overseas until they again encountered Barcelona, who beat them at home in December despite Benzema’s seizing on an error by Victor Valdés to open the scoring after 21 seconds. Alexis Sánchez, Xavi and Fàbregas hit back to collect the points. Yet Real still finished 2011 as La Liga leaders after a 6–2 win at Sevilla marked by two familiar manifestations: a Ronaldo hat-trick and the sight of Pepe taking the walk of shame, having collected two yellow cards.

  Real again lost at home to Barcelona in the first leg of the Copa del Rey quarter-finals, Éric Abidal securing a 2–1 advantage from Messi’s gorgeously dinked pass, but a 2–2 draw in the return emphasised that Mourinho had learned from his almost ridiculously cautious tactics at the Bernabéu in the Champions League the previous season. Now Real stood toe to toe with Barcelona, probing their weaknesses, notably in the air at set-pieces. And against lesser opponents they continued to give Guardiola’s team a lesson in consistency. Mourinho was managing his resources with much more skill than Guardiola, whose battle-weariness was evident in hints that this season would be his last before taking a rest, and at one stage Real led by ten points. Even they felt the tension of the race in March, when Mourinho’s fitness trainer Rui Faria was expelled from a match for the third time in a season – accompanied on this occasion by Mourinho himself – but 21 April at Camp Nou brought a La Liga victory in the Clasico at last, and Guardiola conceded the title.

  This momentous match was the filling in a Champions League sandwich for both clubs – and neither found the bread palatable. Real went out to Bayern after Iker Casillas saved two penalties but was confounded by the failures to convert of Ronaldo, Kaká and Sergio Ramos. Barcelona contrived to lose to a Chelsea reduced to ten men after John Terry had kneed Sánchez while he foolishly imagined all eyes would be elsewhere. This was an emphatically revived Chelsea, Roman Abramovich having taken the decision to sacrifice André Villas-Boas in the interests of squad morale. Villas-Boas had been lured – like Mourinho seven years earlier – from Porto only the previous summer, but the short-term effect of his replacement by Roberto Di Matteo, his erstwhile assistant, spoke for itself in volumes culminating in Bayern’s dismay. Villas-Boas ended up at Tottenham Hotspur, the club which had tried to attract Mourinho after his departure from Chelsea.

  Mourinho had season three at the Bernabéu to savour. This was the season he had hoped would be his most glorious at Stamford Bridge, and the friction with Abramovich and associates had confounded that. But somehow there was a sense that Vilanova – a Catalan like Guardiola, albeit a relatively journeyman player whose career had peaked with occasional contributions to the midfield that helped Real Mallorca to promotion to the Primera in 1996–97 – might suffer more than a sore eye now. There was little evidence of the mellowing of Mourinho that Gérard Houllier had foreseen several years earlier. But he did retain, paradoxically, the instinct for grace in defeat that Sir Alex Ferguson and Gary Neville had stimulated in 2005, for after Real’s Champions League ambitions had been dashed, Jupp Heynckes, the veteran Bayern coach, revealed that Mourinho had ‘come to our dressing-room after the match to congratulate my players and coaching staff … it was very noble’.

  Here, at least, was behaviour worthy of what would undoubtedly go down as a golden age of Spanish football, albeit one largely confined to two clubs despite the Europa League exploits of others: Athletic Bilbao reached the final of both the Spanish-dominated Europa League, in which they lost 3–0 to Atlético Madrid, and Copa del Rey, also going down 3–0, this time to Barcelona, who thereby closed the Guardiola era by taking a trophy at the Bernabéu. But there was nothing in the world – not even in England’s rightly vaunted Premier League – to touch the Clasico. Nor any further debate that Mourinho had put an indelible imprint on Real. That goals-for record defined the 2011–12 campaign as beyond the mere pragmatic. With 121, Mourinho team’s outscored by 14 the figure set by the 1979–80 side under the Welshman known locally as John Benjamin Toshack and fondly remembered in Liverpool as ‘Tosh’, the striking partner whose nods and flicks fed Mourinho’s boyhood hero Kevin Keegan. Toshack’s team had Hugo Sánchez, the great Mexican striker, and when he contributed 38 league goals to the 107 some critics described it as a feat that might never be equalled. Cristiano Ronaldo, in Mourinho’s first season, struck 40. He scored 46 in Mourinho’s second season and still finished four behind Lionel Messi. These were the golden boys of the golden age. And Mourinho was its Midas.

  Index

  Abelardo, Ref 1

  Aberdeen FC, Ref 1, Ref 2

  Abidal, Eric, Ref 1, Ref 2

  Abramovich, Roman, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5, Ref 6, Ref 7, Ref 8, Ref 9, Ref 10

  and Chelsea budget, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4–Ref 5

  gift to Mourinho, Ref 1

  and signings, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3–Ref 4, Ref 5–Ref 6

  tensions with Mourinho, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3–Ref 4, Ref 5–Ref 6, Ref 7–Ref 8, Ref 9, Ref 10

  and UEFA controversies, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3

  AC Milan, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5, Ref 6, Ref 7–Ref 8, Ref 9, Ref 10, Ref 11, Ref 12, Ref 13, Ref 14, Ref 15–Ref 16

  Academica Coimbra, Ref 1, Ref 2

  Adams, Tony, Ref 1

  Adebayor, Emmanuel, Ref 1

  Adriano, Ref 1, Ref 2

  Affelay, Ibrahim, Ref 1

  Agger, Daniel, Ref 1

  Águas, José, Ref 1

  Aitken, Ian, Ref 1

  Ajax, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5

  Alberto, Carlos, Ref 1, Ref 2

  Albiol, Raul, Ref 1

  Alcaide, Jesus, Ref 1–Ref 2

  Alenitchev, Dmitri, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4

  Alex, Ref 1

  Alexanco, José Ramón, Ref 1

  Allardyce, Sam, Ref 1

  Allison, Malcolm, Ref 1, Ref 2

  A
lmeria, Ref 1

  Alonso, Xabi, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5, Ref 6

  Altintop, Hamit, Ref 1

  Alves, Dani, Ref 1, Ref 2

  American Express, Ref 1

  Amora, Ref 1

  Ancelotti, Carlo, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5

  Anderlecht, Ref 1

  Arne Riise, John, Ref 1

  Arnesen, Frank, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4

  Arrowsmith, Percy and Florence, Ref 1

  Arsenal FC, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5, Ref 6, Ref 7, Ref 8

  and ‘Batle of the Buffet’, Ref 1

  managed by Graham, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3

  versus Chelsea, Ref 1, Ref 2–Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5

  Arteta, Mikel, Ref 1

  Aston Villa FC, Ref 1, Ref 2–Ref 3, Ref 4, Ref 5

  Athletic Bilbao, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3

  Atkinson, Ron, Ref 1

  Atlético Madrid, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3, Ref 4

  Auxerre, Ref 1

  Baía, Vitor, Ref 1, Ref 2

  Ballack, Michael, Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3

  Balotelli, Mario, Ref 1

  Banks, Mike, Ref 1

  Barcelona, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3

  managed by Robson, Ref 1, Ref 2–Ref 3, Ref 4–Ref 5, Ref 6–Ref 7, Ref 8, Ref 9, Ref 10, Ref 11, Ref 12–Ref 13, Ref 14, Ref 15, Ref 16

  managed by van Gaal, Ref 1–Ref 2, Ref 3–Ref 4, Ref 5, Ref 6, Ref 7, Ref 8, Ref 9, Ref 10, Ref 11, Ref 12