The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho

by Torres, Diego

  It took only one spark, however, for the insubordination to explode. It was 18 September 2011, away to Levante, a ground that always tested the nerves of Mourinho and his players. Di María was lying on the ground, exaggerating the effects of a challenge, and Ballesteros leaned over him to say something when he was pushed off balance by Khedira falling down in front of the linesman. Ballesteros went down like a sack of rocks and Khedira was sent off. Real lost 1–0, and in the press conference after the match Mourinho blamed his German midfielder for the defeat.

  Considered by his team-mates to be one of the manager’s men, Sami Khedira knew very well how to distinguish between professional loyalty and being in league with someone. He was a serious individual. When the majority felt they had to laugh at the boss’s jokes, the German remained unmoved. Although he did not make unnecessary concessions, he was inevitably obedient. Up until these last few months his impenetrable character cloaked any insecurities very well. On that trip to Valencia, however, he owned up to a concern that had haunted him since the pre-season, when he saw that the coach had toyed with the idea of putting Coentrão in his place.

  Before the match, and in anticipation of the sort of tactics that Levante would deploy, Mourinho told his players to go up to the referee and encourage him to show cards to the opposition. He also told them to ‘defend their team-mates’ when they were under attack. What did ‘defend’ mean when the ball was not in play? Each interpreted this in their own way. Khedira had dutifully done what was asked of him. Seeing that Di María was getting bothered by Ballesteros, he defended him.

  Mourinho’s reaction came as a surprise to the squad. The coach had spent a year presenting himself as the champion and guardian of his players. He had assured them that he would allow himself to be exposed to public pressure in order to preserve them from external criticism, no matter what happened. Then suddenly, after a defeat, he publicly pointed the finger at one of his most loyal men to take away his own share of the blame. A sense of danger, of helplessness, became all too clear over the course of the next few days. The team was at breaking point. When Ramos demanded an explanation from the manager, in the next match against Racing Santander in the Sardinero on 21 September, three days after the trip to the east, he was dropped from the starting line-up by the coach. Madrid drew 0–0.

  Toño, the Racing goalkeeper, did not have a save to make all night. The match – Madrid’s most anaemic of those three years – left Madrid a point behind Barcelona. A degree of anxiety was detected in Mourinho, followed by a gesture of utter helplessness in front of his players. According to two witnesses, the coach begged for an answer, as if he were completely unaware what the cause of the whole situation was:

  ‘What’s the matter with you all?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ they replied. ‘Why are there some of us that you don’t even talk to? Why do a lot of us not even exist as far as you’re concerned? Why are the errors of some unforgivable and the errors of others ignored? We all want to be in this together.’

  Having become accustomed to giving uninterrupted monologues over the course of the last year, Mourinho was startled that his subordinates were now speaking up. He was, however, prepared to listen to this, the first angry opposition he had encountered at the club. Casillas, Ramos, Arbeloa and Higuaín were the most vehement of those present. They laid before him the long list of grievances shared among the squad. Complaints about the favouritism with which he treated those in the group who were either directly or indirectly related to his agent were high on the agenda. They also asked him not to discuss his players’ errors in public, as he had done with Khedira in Valencia. In the face of these protests, Mourinho offered up a ‘scientific’ justification of his behaviour:

  ‘It’s a psychological tactic. I do it to get more out of you.’

  He told them he would stop systematically denouncing referees, and that never again would he ask his team not to attempt a comeback, as he had in his 1 May team-talk ahead of the return leg of the Champions League semi-final that they lost against Barça. The players said that from now on they would try to win every game, and would stop thinking about blaming referees or building off-the-pitch communication strategies:

  ‘We’re not going to go out and play a game just to prepare for a press conference where you can complain about referees.’

  Pérez was so alarmed at what he saw taking place on the pitch that he had gone down to the dressing room to try to find out what was happening. Eventually, the president backed Ramos but also encouraged him – for the sake of a diplomatic outcome – to assume the role of mediator between the players and the manager that had previously been taken by Casillas. Ramos promised Mourinho he would give everything on the pitch if his coach put his faith in him. He assured him that he would be able to lead the team from the heart of the defence, where he could be more influential. From then on, Ramos played in the centre and returned to full-back only in cases of emergency.

  A barbecue in Valdebebas put an end to the disagreements and inaugurated a new era. Everyone had their photos taken and toasted a new commitment to peace and unity. The atmosphere was festive, the players laughed enthusiastically in front of the camera and only the subdued look on the coach’s face hinted that the harmony was perhaps not universal. Seated at a table in front of a few plates of left-over pork and beef, the man who a month ago had been at the height of his power and influence, realised he now had a problem.

  Endowed with a keen sense of survival, Mourinho knew that he might just save his reputation if he could win some time. The players suspected that his capitulation was not genuine and had only been given because things had come to a head. ‘When this crisis has passed, heads will roll,’ mused one. Mourinho’s concessions and compromises, guaranteed until December, formed a medium-term strategy to preserve ‘their own’, as the players referred to Mendes’s men. There were still eight months to go before the end of the season and he needed to be more conciliatory if he wanted to win the league. He needed willing workers.

  According to his colleagues, he very soon realised, however, that these measures would mean he could never fulfil the ambition of founding his own empire. The limits to his Spanish adventure were now becoming increasingly apparent. He had attempted to use the Super Cup and the pitched battle that marred it to proclaim the triumph of his own propaganda and establish Coentrão as a symbol of his infallibility – but the result had been a fiasco. The media not only failed to treat him as a ‘living legend’, they even began to discover his shortcomings. Not only was the signing of Coentrão presented as an incomprehensible error; everyone saw that the dressing room was coming apart in his hands, undermining the public’s perception of his leadership abilities and his charismatic mystique.

  In those weeks of September 2011 Mourinho began to convince himself that it would be best to find another club as he could no longer sign who he wanted to without being the object of constant suspicion. He let Jorge Mendes know, and Mendes headed to London, in search of offers and a better future.

  Chapter 9

  Triumph

  ‘How can the ability to lead depend on the ability to follow? You might as well say that the ability to float depends on the ability to sink.’

  L. J. Peter and R. Hull, The Peter Principle

  José Mourinho called his confidant and disciple, the fitness coach Rui Faria, and asked him to do him a favour. He had to call him on his mobile while he was giving a press conference, interrupting it so that everyone could hear the ringtone that he had just programmed into his smartphone. The call triggered the distant voice of Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun dorma’ in a pocket-sized Turandot.

  The story circulated around the dressing room, lightening the mood. The boss’s jokes – at first – were a source of amusement. For Mourinho, however, his antics were very serious. What impressed Aitor Karanka when he first met him was not Mourinho’s passion for football but the overriding importance he placed on the image he projected to the media. Sinc
e first stepping foot in Valdebebas Mourinho began to send out a wide variety of signals, so that journalists would have both sophisticated and mythical elements with which to compose their portraits of him. What would they think when they discovered that he was not just a coach but a lover of bel canto and a former habitué of La Scala opera house in Milan?

  Mourinho was raised in an environment that was more sporting than intellectual. His grandfather had been president of Vitória de Setúbal, the club par excellence of his homeland, and his father Félix a professional goalkeeper and coach. He himself tried – unsuccessfully – to embark on a career as a player, first for Os Belenenses and then for Rio Ave, where his father was manager, but not even enjoying this support helped him succeed. The frustration he faced on realising his footballing dreams would not work out fed his desire to excel in other areas, as well as his scorn for the intelligence of the average player, his underestimation of the whimsical and playful nature of football, and his overestimation of the science that supported it.

  Besides being the founder of the so-called ‘science of human movement’, the versatile Professor Manuel Sérgio was the biggest academic influence on Mourinho. His classes at the Higher Institute of Physical Education in Lisbon in the mid-1980s made a deep impression on the future coach.

  Sérgio convinced him that technical football knowledge was not as important as a broad knowledge of the human sciences, public speaking, psychology, pedagogy and dialectics. Sérgio also persuaded him that he was gifted. The old master would say, ‘The genius of Mourinho goes far beyond just football.’

  In keeping with his mentor’s judgement, Mourinho wanted his colleagues not to think of him as simply a legendary figure in the world of football. That was not enough. He was utterly convinced that he possessed an extraordinary intellect, something he tried to let Karanka know every time he spoke with him about his discoveries in the fields of motivation, group management, methodology, training and tactics. From the long list of issues that inflamed his boastful imagination one was held above all others: it was what he called the ‘high-pressure triangle’. What his players called the ‘trivote’.

  Mourinho took advantage of time spent in hotels on the eve of games to pontificate about the ‘high-pressure triangle’ in meetings with his assistants. For hours Karanka, Morais, Faria and Campos listened to him reflect on what was essentially a 4-3-2-1 formation as if it were the secret workings of a miracle weapon whose devastating effect would leave Spanish football stunned and mark the history of the game for ever. On paper the invention could work with any midfielders, but in practice players with certain qualities were needed. Fate had put four such men at Mourinho’s disposal: Alonso, Lass, Pepe and Khedira.

  Pepe was in many ways the prototype in the role but, because he was the player most loyal to Mourinho and was needed in the centre of defence, he became the back-up option. Alonso was not a great athlete but made up for it with his passing ability; Lass possessed all the qualities that were necessary to play within the ‘triangle’; and Khedira was a 1,500-metre runner with stamina second to none in the squad. His ability to cover so much ground was essential if Mourinho’s plan were to be properly executed.

  On the lookout for pieces that fitted perfectly into the system he wanted to play, Mourinho signed Khedira after studying the player’s performance on the pitch for Germany. According to FIFA statistics from the 2010 World Cup, the midfielder had the best figures of the tournament. With 78.5 kilometres run in seven games, he was fourth in the list of players who had covered the most distances, after Xavi (80 km), Schweinsteiger (79.8 km) and Pereira (78.6 km). But what the coach most admired about him was what FIFA called ‘intensive activity time’. In this Khedira was number one. The German put in high-intensity work over the course of 58 minutes, as against 57 from Xavi, 56 from Alonso and 54 from Schweinsteiger.

  Finally, there was Lass. The Frenchman was Mourinho’s perfect idea of what a central midfielder should be, and he considered him to be the most complete midfielder in his squad. He was fascinated by the speed with which he was capable of winning back the ball, his man-marking instinct and the tenacity he showed when harassing those he marked. Lass was the coach’s defensive-midfielder ‘fetish’, but the two men had fallen out. To the perceived unpaid dues of his time at Chelsea, Lass added the resentment he felt towards Mourinho for having preferred Khedira to him for most of his first season. Mourinho thought the Spanish public were not yet ready for his three-midfielder system and, until he won the trophies that would allow him to do whatever he wanted, he chose to give a free rein to Khedira because he was a player signed by Florentino Pérez. All of this went against Lass’s natural desire to play every minute of every match and, upset by his relegation to the bench, in January 2011 he agreed with Jorge Valdano that he should be sold in the summer. But Valdano was sacked himself, and Mourinho liked the player so much that he asked that he only be sold if his €20 million buy-out clause were met. As nobody was willing to do that, he was kept – against his will. Mourinho was willing to overlook all his ‘insolent’ behaviour just so he could put him in his side, telling him to train at his own pace and that he would make the team. Mourinho promised him that he would play the big games, and Lass accepted through gritted teeth.

  Madrid’s play on the pitch was a compromise, the result of an unstable equilibrium. The internal tensions at the club that had to be tolerated by Mourinho during the 2011–12 season were no greater than the pressures he put his players under. The attempted mutiny and the subsequent pact after the game in Santander reflected the different aspirations of the coach and most of the squad. Both sides pushed to protect interests that often clashed. The players protected their contracts. What interested Mourinho was the safeguarding of his image as a successful coach and a bastion of power, cemented over the last year with the help of Jorge Mendes.

  In a club like Madrid, the amount spent on first-team players’ contracts is unsustainable without winning silverware. Players knew that they would be facing what was commonly known as a ‘cleaning’ of the dressing room if they did not win the league or the Champions League very soon. The last league had been won in 2008, and Casillas and Ramos both understood the urgency of at least winning this domestic competition to give the dressing room some breathing space from the persistent feeling of disappointment felt by the club’s fans. Since 2011, as well as the ‘cleaning’, staff at the club recognised a new source of professional instability. If the lack of trophies threatened many players’ future at the club, the interests of Mendes were no less of a threat. Many players sensed the Mourinho’s desire to fill the squad with his own men, resulting in more than a few casualties. They noted the importance of commercial and political motivations rather than sporting ones, and saw the arrival of Coentrão as an advance warning: the ferret pushing them out of the cave. Mourinho was suspicious enough to perceive the danger and, under the cloak of the prevailing institutional silence, the scene was being set for an inevitable conflict. As one employee of the club said, ‘If Mourinho continues next year he’ll have to change half the squad.’

  Those who know him from earlier stages in his career say that Mourinho’s pattern of behaviour has changed. At Porto, Inter and Chelsea he put sporting success before any other consideration. At Madrid, with a host of titles already on his CV, he seemed more concerned to win in his own way, to put a distinctive stamp on things. He set out to promote those players that he had signed in the transfer market and to implement his tactical principles, believing that this was the only way his brand image would be visible should the club win anything. Winning was not enough. He had already experienced that. He wanted his triumphs to go hand-in-hand with his own particular style and be achieved with his favourite sons. He therefore made it his priority that both Coentrão and Di María prospered.

  In the dressing room a theory circulated: Di María and Coentrão were players who lacked time and judgement on the pitch and, anxious to please the boss, did nothing more than run a
nd collide into opponents. Conscious of their rejection by the rest of the dressing room, Mourinho acted furtively until November and put his protected ones to one side so as to give some playing time to Kaká and Marcelo.

  No player in the Madrid squad possessed the same mix of prestigious titles, both individual and team, as Kaká. Winner of the 2002 World Cup, the 2007 Champions League and the Ballon d’Or of the same year, his move to Madrid in the summer of 2009 was accompanied by the usual fanfare. Pérez signed him from Milan for €65 million in response to prolonged petitioning from the club. The desire to see him performing at his best immediately accelerated his fall. With expectations sky high, he had to prove his value, and he played for months with an injury to his pubis. He failed to shake this off over the course of the first year, there being times when the pain was so severe that he could not walk. As the months passed he decided against an operation so as not to miss the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. His fitness steadily deteriorated and during the tournament he suffered a serious knee injury. His recuperation took almost a year but by the summer of 2011, when he felt almost fit again, his team-mates saw that he was training like never before. Mourinho, however, had already passed sentence. At 29 he considered the footballer to be finished. Rui Faria repeated his sentence among friends: ‘Kaká is to Madrid what Shevchenko was to Chelsea.’