The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho

by Torres, Diego

  The match quickly descended into trench warfare. Madrid fought for every inch of the pitch, contesting every ball with exceptional aggression. Barça struggled to find space, and when they did they encountered Casillas. The goalkeeper saved his team with three memorable stops: one from Messi in the 74th minute, another a minute later from Pedro and the third from Iniesta in the 80th minute. The game went to extra-time, in which a towering header from Ronaldo crowned a move started by Marcelo and Di María. The match ended 0–1.

  The way Madrid celebrated their victory was rather curious. Ronaldo, seemingly more proud than overjoyed, threw a few glances the way of his team-mates to suggest that he felt vindicated. Casillas wrapped himself in the Spanish flag and raised the cup, overjoyed to have secured his first trophy as Madrid’s first-team captain. But the Barça players were startled that several Madrid players did not acknowledge them. Mascherano and Guardiola were particularly disappointed by the evasive attitude of Alonso. The Argentinian player, who had been friends with the Basque when they were both at Liverpool, did not understand what was going on. Something similar happened between Villa and Arbeloa, jeopardising their emerging friendship.

  Iniesta told a friend that during the April clásicos there were times when his international team-mates on the Madrid side behaved as if they did not know him, as if they had become different people. They avoided looking him in the eyes so they did not have to say hello.

  Someone said that during the final Özil looked like a ballet dancer in the jungle. Playing on the right, loaded with defensive duties, Özil was more concerned with tracking Adriano than attacking, and because of the trivote he finished up lost in the scrub. Replaced by Adebayor on 71 minutes without having contributing anything important, his team-mates say he was so upset with himself that he barely joined in the celebrations. The German suspected that Mourinho did not quite trust him because he was not a Mendes player, that hardcore group that the rest of the squad called ‘los suyos’ (‘theirs’ or ‘their own’). As one Spanish player said, ‘Özil is the least “theirs” of “theirs”.’

  Although after the medals ceremony, in the dressing room, Mourinho was surly and seemingly dissatisfied, by the time he caught the plane back to Madrid he was more relaxed. He puffed out his chest in the waiting-halls of Valencia Airport in Manises, repeating, ‘This is football! This is football!’ The final reaffirmed his belief that a very good way of playing football is to give the ball and the initiative to the opposition. Overcoming the Spanish public and players’ resistance to football being played in this manner, especially at Madrid, had been one of his great challenges as a coach and he used the final to gain credibility for his methods. Supportive as ever, Karanka spent the return journey to Madrid maintaining that Barcelona were really not a very competitive team, echoing what Mourinho said: that their status was just an invention of the press.

  On 23 April, four days before the first leg of the semi-finals of the Champions League, Madrid returned to Valencia to play their 33rd league game of the season. Mourinho was in an excellent mood, pacing the dressing room and encouraging the troops with some stand-up comedy. Once again they heard that Barcelona were a fiction constructed by the media, and that this owed everything to the semi-final they had unfairly won against Chelsea in 2009. During lunch at the hotel he approached the table where the Spanish players were sitting, from where he could be heard laughing at himself uproariously:

  ‘You know what I’m going to do to Barcelona? I’m going to keep the grass long and I’m not going to water it. You’ll see the look on their faces when they go out to warm up!’

  ‘You bastard!’ Granero said admiringly.

  But only he – and Adán – found Mourinho funny; they were the only ones who appeared to admire the coach, even when he was not there. Granero’s appreciation was so exaggerated that his team-mates changed his nickname from ‘Pirata’, meaning pirate, to ‘Perota’, merging pirata with the word ‘pelota’, an informal term for a sycophant.

  By winning the cup and reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League Mourinho consolidated his power. Pérez began to let it be known among his colleagues that the coach would be staying at least another year and that Valdano’s days were numbered. This had a startling effect on the dressing room: now aware of what had been decided at the highest level, the group of players pledging allegiance to Mourinho grew in size, although many at the club still doubted his theories. Of all the players it was Alonso who made the most surprising U-turn. The midfielder went from being Mourinho’s sharpest critic to becoming an open ally. Only a few remained unmoved, Pedro León, Casillas and Lass prominent among those who continued to keep their distance. Lass told team-mates after the game in the Mestalla: ‘I’ve known Mourinho for years and I can assure you that beating Barça’s not the main thing for him. What he really doesn’t want is to lose by many goals. That way he can blame the referee.’

  These remaining tensions were discussed at the official directors’ lunch. The Barcelona directors had asked Pérez to do something about Mourinho before any bad feeling spread to the supporters but the Madrid directors agreed that it was impossible to do anything with him. He was uncontrollable. ‘You don’t know Mourinho,’ said one Madrid director. Pérez said nothing. The food was getting cold and soon everyone fell silent; shortly afterwards they left, without the traditional post-meal chat. The Barcelona representatives’ anger was evident when one of them made an abrupt threat that Pérez took very seriously:

  ‘Do you know what the dream of Barcelonismo is? It’s to get you back for what happened with Figo. Because the damage that did to the club was irreparable …’

  The team-talk before the semi-final first-leg on 27 April was much like the ones Mourinho had delivered at the Mestalla. In part dedicated to the referee, it included instructions that the players thought were somewhat contradictory. After asking them to go in hard for the ball and try to physically overwhelm Barça, Mourinho stressed how they should realise that UEFA referees would not be as benign as Spanish ones. Pepe, according to team-mates close to him, said that Mourinho had given him a series of one-on-one talks in which he repeatedly mentioned the word ‘intimidate’. Face to face with Pepe, he insisted that he should cultivate a frightening image in the eyes of the Barça players and that to achieve this, if necessary, he had to be violent. He warned him that he would come in for criticism but promised him protection. Whatever he did, however well or otherwise he played, if he did what he was told he would always be in the team.

  The 5–0 in 2010 had made Mourinho so nervous that he cooked up the theory that the only way to stop Barça was to commit more fouls. He asked his team to be as physical as possible, suggesting the referee would not be able to blow for every single foul unless he decided to abandon the match.

  The number of fouls that Madrid committed against Barcelona in the 17 clásicos of the league, Copa del Rey, Champions League and Spanish Super Cup during the 2010–11 and 2012–13 seasons are, in chronological order: 16, 22, 27, 18, 30, 26, 17, 22, 20, 29, 20, 13, 17, 16, 19, 13, and 21. In total: 346 fouls by Madrid against 220 from Barça over the same period.

  The peaks of the Madrid graph were the 27 fouls of the cup final in the Mestalla, the 30 fouls of the second leg of the 2011 Champions League semi-finals and the 29 fouls of the Copa del Rey semi-finals in January 2011. The first leg of the semi-finals of the Champions League was, however, an exception: an unusually low number of fouls by Madrid and an unusually high number by Barça. It was the only clásico in the three-year series in which Madrid committed fewer fouls than their rivals: 18 to Barça’s 20. The conservative approach of both teams led to a strange situation. Madrid played for a goalless draw, and although Barcelona enjoyed plenty of possession they did not commit themselves to all-out attack.

  Guardiola admitted later that he did not think it possible that his team could win both the cup and the Champions League. The physical and mental exhaustion of his players at that point of the season was so ext
reme the Barça coach believed that only the anger following the defeat at the Mestalla could give them the energy to keep going.

  The first leg of the semi-finals of the Champions League at the Bernabéu on 27 April 2011 was the most pitiful clásico of the lot. With the exception of Puyol, who had come back from injury, replacing Adriano at left-back, Guardiola picked the same team as for the cup final. Mourinho retained his system, covering the absence of Albiol and Khedira with Carvalho and Lass. Once the game started, the spectacle left the crowd bemused. Half-paralysed by the exertions of the cup, Barcelona barely had the strength even to attempt controlling the game by maintaining possession. Their players waited for Madrid in their own half, displaying an obvious attacking deficit down their own left flank where Puyol found himself in his least favoured defensive berth. Far from exploiting the situation, however, Madrid were reluctant to press and limited themselves to launching speculative 50-yard through balls to Ronaldo, up front on his own. Neither team dared venture into the other’s half without taking significant precautions, but Madrid’s reluctance was the more striking. In the first half the home team did not force Valdes to make a single save; Casillas only made two, both from Xavi.

  At half-time Mourinho further simplified his plan by introducing Adebayor for Özil. The German had burned himself out receiving the ball with his back to Puyol on the rare occasions when his team-mates had found him with long passes out to the right touchline. With the exception of Ronaldo, who spent the match gesticulating to his team-mates, urging reluctant midfielders to advance a few yards to support him, the Madrid players were resigned to what seemed like a truce. But there was no truce, as the tie suddenly descended into chaos. Tired after playing two clásicos in an unfamiliar position that required him to cover a lot of ground, Pepe began arriving late into challenges. An hour into the game, a challenge on Alves – studs-up, flying spectacularly towards the Brazilian’s shinpad, and with no intention of playing the ball – left referee Wolfgang Stark with no choice. It was dangerous play, a straight red, and Pepe was given his marching orders.

  This decision infuriated Mourinho. The coach, who had spent the game sitting on the bench, began protesting so furiously that Stark sent him off, too. Messi took advantage of the confusion to resume hostilities on the pitch, scoring twice in the last quarter of an hour. The match ended 0–2. Employees at the Bernabéu saw Rui Faria, Mourinho’s right-hand man, yelling in the tunnel at the Barça players through the bars of the dividing barrier:

  ‘Why don’t you go and change in the referees’ dressing room? You win everything because of the referees.’

  Pinto, Puyol and Piqué invited Faria to carry on the discussion on the other side of the barrier. The Madrid players began to berate their rivals, with the Barça players responding that they had given Madrid another footballing lesson:

  ‘That’s how you play football.’

  Celebrations began on the Barcelona side. People sang. Some scoffed. On the Madrid side Faria’s voice continued to rise:

  ‘You believe that you play football but what you really do is buy referees.’

  Boiling point had not yet been reached when Faria encouraged Pepe to go into the Barça dressing room and tell them to shut it. Pepe, like a manic robot whose on-button has just been pressed, launched himself into the visitors’ dressing room where all hell broke loose and a number of players from both teams started fighting. The Barcelona players, who throughout the season had endured veiled accusations of bribery, simulation and even doping, found that their international team-mates at Real Madrid were far more loyal to Mourinho than Mourinho himself believed – or at least said he believed.

  Other coaches, with the same or similar resources, would have taken steps to try to turn the result around at the Camp Nou. This was not the case with Mourinho, for whom the decisiveness of the first goal had by now become almost a religious belief. Some employees and players at Madrid even speculated that the sending-off of the coach had been premeditated, in keeping with his policy of always having a ready-made excuse handy. Another theory came from his own dressing room: given the choice between an epic sporting achievement and some heroic propaganda, the coach would really rather prefer to be the underdog rather than the victor. He had more to gain from being the victim.

  Mourinho showed his utter indignation when he proclaimed in the dressing room that his team had been robbed. He reminded the players that this confirmed his idea of a UEFA plot, and encouraged them to go to the mixed zone and denounce what had happened in their own words.

  If shamanism is a desperate attempt to control the terrors of the world by imitating them, what Mourinho did after the defeat was a kind of exorcism in reverse. Perhaps he was resolved to put on a demon mask and stage a parody of a black mass, in what has to go down as the most outrageous press conference in the history of the Champions League. His greying hair, half messed up by the fever he had caught, his grey jacket, his mournful black shirt – all these gave him the look of a troubled priest as he delivered his now-famous denunciation of the institutional conspiracy within UEFA and the Spanish Football Federation, one that favoured Barcelona:

  ‘If I tell the referee and UEFA what I think and what I feel, my career ends today. And I cannot say what I feel but I leave a question that I hope one day will have an answer. Why? Why Obrevo? Why Busacca? Why De Bleeckere? Why Stark? Why? Why in every semi-final does the same thing always happen? We’re talking about an absolutely fantastic football team. I’ve said it many times. Why Obrevo three years ago? Why could Chelsea not proceed to the final? Why did Inter have to play with 10 men for so long? Why this year have they tried to finish the tie in this match, when we could be here for three hours and it was still going to finish 0–0 … We were going to put Kaká on for Lass and we were going to try to get a little bit further up the pitch, but the strategy of the game was that we were not going to lose … Why? I don’t understand. I don’t know if it’s UNICEF publicity, I don’t know if it’s the power of señor [Ángel María ] Villar at UEFA, I don’t know if it’s because they’re very nice, I don’t know. I don’t understand. Congratulations on a great football team. But congratulations also for all you have too, it must be very difficult to achieve. You’ve gained this power and the others have no chance. Against Chelsea, Drogba and Bosingwa were sanctioned. Against Inter, Motta didn’t play the final. Against Arsenal, Wenger and Nasri were penalised.

  ‘Today, I’m punished. I don’t know why. I’m here just to pose a question that I hope one day will be answered. I was sent off with a red card and shouldn’t even be here. There was a foul against us, a foul against Barça and suddenly, miraculously, Pepe is sent off, a team with 10 men, and space for them to solve problems that they’d not been able to solve before. The second game is in Barcelona: obviously, if we’re talking simply in sporting terms, it’s a very difficult mission. Today, we’ve seen that that’s impossible. They have to get to the final – and they will reach the final. I can live my whole life with this question, but I hope one day to have an answer. Why? Why a team of this size, a great footballing team, needs something that is so obvious to everyone? Obrevo, De Bleeckere, Busacca, Frisk, Stark … I don’t understand.

  ‘Football should be played with the same rules for everyone. The same for everyone! Then the best man wins. Maybe today we’ll draw 0–0 and in the second game Barcelona will win with merit, and we accept with fair play. But why now …? In a balanced game, that’s going to finish 0–0 …? Why do what you have done? Only the referee can answer but he will not because he’ll go home and doesn’t have to answer to anyone about anything. And me, nothing … We worked a miracle last year and this year it’s not been possible to have another miracle with 10 men.

  ‘Madrid are eliminated from the final of the Champions League … We’ll go to Barcelona with all the pride and respect we feel for our world of football, but sometimes it disgusts me a bit. I’m a bit disgusted to live in this world and make a living in this world, but it’s our wor
ld … If by chance we score a goal and slightly open up the tie, they’ll kill us again. Today has shown that we’ve no chance. And my question is: Why? Why not let the other teams play against them? If they’re better they’ll end up winning. Why is this? I don’t understand …’

  Mourinho brought his soliloquy to an abrupt end. A reporter then asked about the conservatism of his approach and the fact that this made victory less likely. With extraordinary disinhibition, Mourinho explained that the one thing he really wanted from a game was that it end goalless:

  ‘My approach has different moments of organisation, depending on the game. It passes through not conceding goals, to thwarting the adversary, to playing compactly and deep as in the other two games we played [the league clásico at the Bernabéu and the cup final] … And then at a certain moment, we look for a change of organisation with the arrival of a fixed centre-forward, and at a more advanced stage, another change, playing a number 10 behind three attackers.

  ‘It’s the approach of a match that’s 0–0, which looks set to finish 0–0, and then, in a moment of frustration for the opposition, you risk trying to win. You can lose or draw 0–0, which is the most logical. But you have a plan that the referee hasn’t let you carry out. And I continue with the same question. Why? Why send off Pepe? Why? Why not give four penalties in a match against Chelsea …?’

  The coach repeated his claims, with some variations, for about 10 minutes until he swept out of the room. Only he knows if his conviction was feigned or not. What is certain is that his complaints centred on insinuations of deliberate misjudgements from referees on a massive scale – and he knew very well how to spread these – and the certainty that UEFA had cheated them, and the Madrid directors and Pérez in particular. For weeks many of the directors encouraged the debate on the sending-off. To support their side of the argument, they supplied images to the media that supposedly showed that Pepe’s studs had made no contact with Alves’s leg.