The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho

by Torres, Diego

  The goalkeeper said, ‘Look, everyone here can do what they want. We’re all old enough so anyone who wants to bad-mouth referees can do so, and anyone who doesn’t want to doesn’t have to. What I think is, instead of thinking about which referees we’ve got, we should forget the stories and concentrate on the matches, because this is very complicated. If we’re going to concentrate on the stories we’re going to get distracted. It would be a mistake. If we keep talking about referees then we’re going to lose the league – that’s for sure.’

  Any analysis of the refereeing of the games involving La Liga’s big two between 2010 and 2013 would invite the conclusion that Mourinho’s paranoia – if he really had any – was unfounded. This is especially true for the 2011–12 season. In this campaign Madrid had five players sent off, one more than Barça. In everything else they enjoyed the more favourable decisions. Madrid were awarded a single penalty against them for every 13 in their favour, while Barça were given one against them for every 11 in their favour. In that season Madrid benefited from the sending off of 14 opposition players as against the eight that were sent off playing against Barça. In total, between the 2010–11 and 2012–13 seasons Madrid were given 34 penalties and Barcelona 21, despite the fact that, statistically, the Catalan team enjoyed far more possession in their opponents’ half.

  The players were well aware of these numbers. What is more, they had decided a long time ago that they were not going to get involved in the boss’s battles, particularly when he was fighting them in Villarreal. It was at this point that many thought that Mourinho had finally been completely laid bare following his outburst against a team that were about to go down. Later on, Rui Faria and Karanka admitted that what he really feared was being thought of as the manager who lost the league after having enjoyed a ten-point lead. With the pending trip to the Camp Nou, the possibility of a Barcelona league comeback made him suspect that his players had abandoned him and that they could even intentionally lose the game in order to destroy him. His reaction was to refuse to give press conferences for the remainder of the league season.

  The major concern of the players was now no longer the link between Mourinho and Jorge Mendes, their relationship with the media, propaganda, referees or their own contracts. All of these had retreated into the background. Everything was secondary to the most pressing issue, winning the league. This alone would redeem them, return their workplace to a state of peace, put them in a better position in front of the boss and regain the respect of the fans, and guarantee them a good price in the market for a future transfer. But all this depended on them solving one problem: how to play the game in tight spaces.

  After two years, Mourinho had failed to come up with any solutions to make the team more creative at times when they needed to attack their opponent’s goal without much space in front of them. The difficulty of controlling games when they had control of the ball but were faced with teams that packed the area led various players to hold a meeting after the Villarreal match. The first players to speak were Alonso, Ramos, Casillas, Arbeloa and Higuaín. They agreed that since the coach could not help them in this particular matter, then they should themselves devise a remedy. They planned to squeeze the pitch more and ignore the order that the forwards had to remain up front, never dropping deeper to offer themselves in midfield. They also contemplated the idea of the central striker getting into wider areas to generate more space.

  Although the team had problems developing their play, they counted on a universally accepted remedy. It was called Cristiano Ronaldo and he had just turned 27 years old – a magical number for goalscorers, the age at which Romario, Van Basten and Henry clocked up their career-best goal tallies for a single season. With four games left to go before the end of the campaign, on the eve of travelling to the Camp Nou, Ronaldo had scored 41 goals in 33 matches. His statistics were unbelievable. Since the times of the legendary Puskas and Di Stéfano there had been nobody capable of beating or even matching their goal returns. Although he did not possess the vision, the timing or the range of passing of these two giants of the game, he surpassed them in terms of finishing. What he could not manage with subtlety he resolved with a missile strike. He had been decisive in almost all the difficult games. In Málaga (3 goals), in Valencia (2), against Atlético at the Bernabeu (3) and the Calderón (3), against Sevilla at the Sánchez Pizjuán (2), against Athletic Bilbao (2), against Betis in Seville (2) and in the Sadar against Osasuna (3). When he failed to score, Madrid suffered. Of the 11 games in which Ronaldo went goalless, his team lost two and drew three. If Ronaldo responded in the right way, having to play the game in tight spaces could be forgotten. It was enough, as at the Calderón or the Sadar, for him just to fire a rocket from outside the area.

  Events sucked the two contenders into the funnel of the Camp Nou. On Saturday 21 April Madrid faced Barça, hoping to settle the league. The sun had warmed up the afternoon as if it were summer and a warm breeze was blowing when the two teams took to the field. With just four games left, Madrid led the table with four points. Lass had been banished for insubordination, so Mourinho picked his least experimental midfield in a team featuring Casillas, Arbeloa, Pepe, Ramos, Coentrão, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Özil, Ronaldo and Benzema. More innovative was Guardiola, who left Pedro on the bench, lining up with Valdés, Puyol, Mascherano, Adriano, Alves, Busquets, Xavi, Thiago, Tello, Messi and Iniesta.

  This was Casillas’s 15th game in the Camp Nou. He knew the dressing room, the tunnel, the music all off by heart. The Barça hymn was about to begin when the captain shouted as loudly as he could for the players to go out on to the pitch. His voice was so loud it could be heard from both benches.

  ‘Señores,’ he said. ‘We’re going to forget about the controversies. We’re going to forget about the referees. And we’re going to put all our energy into playing football. We can do it! We can do it!’

  It was a vociferous call to play the game in the way Madrid once used to. After two years of confusion, the message was crystal clear. Mourinho, who was well within earshot, pretended he had not heard.

  In the event, Madrid played one of their least vigorous clásicos in a long time. Under the direction of Ramos, an increasingly influential leader, they carried out the basic idea of pressing deep in their own half and then counter-attacking. On previous occasions such tactics had proved to be woefully inadequate, but this time Barça did not play to their usual standard. The Madrid players commented that Messi was like someone playing within themselves because they are carrying a muscle injury – he walked, looked around and brooded. Was he saving himself? If so, for what? Something in the home side was not quite right. As the game went on, it became apparent that Guardiola and Messi had had an argument, perhaps even completely rupturing their relationship. Messi no longer wanted to play under the Catalan and Guardiola knew that his own time at Barcelona was up.

  Barcelona started to fall apart from the inside, and Madrid were ready to take advantage – with Ronaldo at his peak.

  A fan’s vision tends to be less sharp than a professional footballer’s. The supporters in the stands – or those watching the game on TV – often get the sense that something dramatic is happening but do not know what. On the pitch players see the small details with such clarity that they can distinguish the banal from the extraordinary. That afternoon in the Camp Nou the Madrid players were left in no doubt about one thing: the magical touch of Mesut Özil.

  It is not just fans who build players into legends. On certain occasions the players themselves admire a fellow professional to the point of worship. From that day in Barcelona the members of the Madrid dressing room gave one player this legendary status; a player who was just 23 and who, with all the pressure of the situation, was able to do something that very rarely comes off, even in training. A touch worthy of a champion.

  It happened in the 72nd minute. Barça had just drawn level at 1–1 through Alexis, the goal confirming that the home side had regained their rhythm and poise. Bit
by bit the Azulgrana were taking control of Madrid territory with their passing and fluid movement, making the Madrid players expect that another defeat was just around the corner, another league title squandered. But then the unexpected took place.

  Three minutes after Alexis scored, Özil received the ball on the right-hand side of the Barcelona half. For a left-footed player getting the correct body shape to play a pass from the right is usually difficult because the effect of the foot on the ball tends to send it towards goal. But the German magician acted with a cold but completely correct impulse, even though it went against the nature of the mechanics of the human body. He controlled the ball, then with his next touch, as if he were cutting something with a knife, he sent the ball forward, giving it a little bit of swerve, using the top of the foot to impart just the right amount of speed.

  The 40-yard pass was perfectly weighted. The ball flew low and at pace but because of the screw-back Özil applied, instead of running through to Valdés it slowed down just behind Mascherano, who could not turn in time, and too far away from the goalkeeper. Then Ronaldo appeared like a bullet.

  He confessed to his team-mates that when he received such a perfect pass he was at first stunned, then anxious.

  ‘I was nervous. I knew that if I didn’t get my first touch right the chance would be gone,’ he said.

  Ronaldo did not fail. Controlling the pass with the outside of his right foot, he found his range, took two steps forward, dropped his hip and drove his foot through the ball. It gained height halfway through its trajectory, clearing the outstretched hand of Valdés. It was the most important goal of Ronaldo’s career in Spain, and meant that Madrid were all but champions.

  When the game finished Madrid’s dressing room was soon full of excited players. From the showers a bellow could be heard that shook the walls, an almost superhuman noise, in a voice not dissimilar to Higuaín’s:

  ‘Are we going to talk about referees now?’

  Everyone broke down in hysterics. Mourinho’s Madrid had just completed their first clear victory in a clásico. The statistics reflected the mountain the team had just climbed: two wins, one in the cup final and the other in this league game, set against four draws and five defeats.

  Madrid competed in their three last games with a renewed vigour, finishing the season with two records. They picked up more points than any team had done before with 100 and they scored a record number of goals with 115. Never before in the league had three players from the same team reached 20 goals: Benzema on 20, Higuaín with 22 and Ronaldo’s extraordinary 44.

  Celebrations in Madrid started with a lunch at which the Spanish players discovered that Mourinho had raised Di María’s salary in January, with back pay. The Argentinian, despite having had a very bitty season, jumped up the pay scale to the extent that with his €4 million net salary he was now on the same level as Alonso, Ramos and Higuaín, all of whom had won silverware, including two leagues in 2006 and 2007 – and in the case of the two Spanish players, a World Cup. Players contracted to Jorge Mendes, it was observed, renewed their contracts with greater speed than any others. Since 2010, everyone apart from Coentrão had received a pay rise thanks to Mourinho’s insistence. It all reminded the dressing room that favouritism would continue if the coach stayed.

  The celebration in the Plaza de Cibeles acted as a release. Casillas climbed up the statue of the goddess after whom the square is named and draped the club flag across her; when he clambered down he embraced Ronaldo before the vast crowd, signifying the beginning of a close friendship. As for Mourinho, he spent the open-top bus journey taking photos with his assistants while holding up seven fingers, one hand open and the other with two fingers raised in victory: his seven league titles, two in Portugal, two in England, two in Italy and one in Spain …

  After the party at the Bernabéu the entourage headed for the official dinner. They had spent several hours laughing together and at this point most did not care who they were with. But not Lass. The Frenchman asked if Mourinho would be present. When it was confirmed to him that the coach would be attending he said he would rather go home.

  Chapter 10

  Sadness

  ‘And this is because injustice creates divisions and hatred and fighting, and justice imparts harmony and friendship; is that not true, Thrasymachus?’

  Plato, The Republic, Book 1

  The Glasgow Hilton is a hotel for businessmen. It is located in the tallest tower in the centre of the city, silhouetted against a grey skyline. The 20-storey structure, rising above the nearby M8 motorway, dripped with rain in the early hours of 16 May 2002. In a poorly lit room on one of the top floors, what looked to the untrained eye like the annual convention of a kitchen-appliance multinational was taking place. It was actually the celebratory dinner of Real Madrid, who had just been proclaimed champions of Europe and were celebrating the novena, their ninth European Cup, in an event presided over by Florentino Pérez.

  ‘We have won the novena and next year we will go for the décima, and then the undécima and the duodécima,’ said the president, in reference to the 10th, 11th and 12th European Cups surely soon to follow.

  The team’s victory, winning the final 2–1 against Bayer Leverkusen, had been swallowed up by institutional protocol. Before the salmon pie, the sirloin steak with potatoes and the ice cream were served, Pérez gave a speech that at the time amazed some of the players because of the casual way in which he spoke about what they had just achieved.

  Steve McManaman recalled the evening at the Hilton in his autobiography Macca, like someone remembering a glass of tap water they once had. ‘With Real Madrid,’ wrote the former England international, ‘you have to make the most of celebrating on the pitch because it’s never a great laugh afterwards. They don’t so much party as mark an occasion. You go from twenty or thirty people, the team and support staff, going ballistic celebrating, spraying champagne everywhere, to a three-course banquet at the Hilton with hundreds and hundreds of unfamiliar faces, TV cameras and press everywhere. There’s nothing personal about it. I’d won my second European Cup winner’s medal, but I didn’t have a wild time. We had a very formal, sit-down meal and speeches. My dad and all our mates were out drinking until dawn, having a fantastic time, but I was on best behaviour at the official banquet.’

  The random nature of football conditions the industry that surrounds it in the most profound way. Perhaps, following the logic of other types of industries, Pérez saw the accumulation of European Cups as something normal. He did not know at the time that after Glasgow, in the eight seasons in which he presided over Madrid until 2013, there would be no celebrations for winning the tournament or even for reaching the final. Nor did he imagine that his theory that European competitions could be dominated by the club’s spending power – nobody was able to match him in the market place – would turn out to be so difficult in practice.

  In the decade that followed the Glasgow final Madrid’s signings broke all transfer records in the history of football. Their investment in new players approached the €1,000 million mark. Of all the champions of Europe in this period, only Chelsea (€950 million) came close to that figure. Barcelona (€600), Inter (€590), Manchester United (€550), Bayern (€400), Milan (€400) and Porto (€300) did not need that much money to win the remaining trophies.

  The ‘10th’ Champions League went from being an almost tangible reality in the imagination of Madrid supporters to becoming a utopian dream. But 10 years after the dinner at the Hilton the feeling among supporters was that they were not far from another European title. The progression of the team during the 2011–12 tournament was as comfortable as the apparent weakness of their opponents suggested. Olympique Lyon, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb, CSKA and APOEL offered little resistance in Madrid’s march to the semi-finals. There, Bayern Munich, who were second in the Bundesliga, awaited them. Bayern’s total revenues, according to Deloitte, were €321 million in the previous season. In the same year Madrid had earned €480 million
, and were now leading the league with two Ballon d’Or winners, a handful of world champions and a coach with a very successful record in UEFA competitions. Renewed optimism swept through both the board of directors and the supporters.

  Two questions dominated Madrid’s trip to Munich: first, would Mourinho have the courage to replace Marcelo, the best left-back in the world, with Fabio Coentrão, who almost all his team-mates thought was the worst player in the squad? Second, would he play with a trivote?

  The probability of the trivote returning increased the moment that Lass, who had been out for a long time, was named in the squad list. But when the team met up at the Westin Grand Hotel in Munich on 16 April Mourinho had already decided that the insubordination of the French midfielder was exceptionally serious. In order to defend his own authority as coach – and as Lass seemed perfectly able to get himself sent off on purpose to hurt him – he chose to give up his midfield fetish. This made Lass for the time being a mere tourist in Munich and meant the ‘high-pressure triangle’, in its most celebrated version at least, was ruled out. But nothing deterred Mourinho from implementing the same ideas with appropriate modifications: in place of Lass he could play Özil, Di María or even Marcelo.

  The team-talk helped answer the first of these two questions: Coentrão would play. The team would be Casillas, Arbeloa, Pepe, Ramos, Coentrão, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Özil, Ronaldo and Benzema. The plan was to lean towards a 4-2-3-1 formation, with the line-up favouring the more subtle members of the squad, although many of Mourinho’s instructions were more in keeping with the trivote.

  Until then, when preparing the 4-2-3-1 Mourinho had asked his line of three attacking midfielders formed by Di María, Özil and Ronaldo to drop deep and offer themselves to the rest of the team so the ball could be played out from the back. Against most opponents he did not object to building from the back. In Munich the instruction was to play direct, missing out the midfield with long, diagonal passes to Di María or Ronaldo, or even longer passes to Benzema, all taking the load off Özil. The German midfielder was told to venture forward, watch for the second ball, without taking the risk of dropping deep to join in the passing moves. Mourinho told his team they should only come out on the charge if they provoked an error from Bayern. Worried about losing the ball in midfield and suffering on the counter-attack at the hands of Robben and Ribéry, he had decided to play as if the midfield did not exist.