The two teams had finished their warm-ups in the Allianz Arena when Kaká crossed paths with his friend Marcelo in the tunnel. The two embraced.
‘What?’ Kaká said. ‘You’re not playing today but you’ll play in the Bernabéu to save the tie? Don’t get your hopes up, though. You won’t be playing in the final!’
Kaká laughed. Marcelo, a compulsive joker, incapable until then of confronting a set-back without a smile, looked very serious. He shrugged his shoulders and looked down at the ground, as if he were trying to overcome his dejection. Kaká grabbed him round the shoulders and tried to cheer him up.
‘Really, it’s very unfair. You gifted us the knockout at APOEL. If we’ve got this far without any problems it’s been thanks to you.’
The game was deadlocked. Both teams were keen not to give away any space and to deny their opponents time on the ball. They were still finding their way when Ribéry controlled a rebound from a corner and scored through a forest of standing legs. The 1–0 scoreline alarmed Mourinho, who changed the formation on 20 minutes from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-2-1. Di María left the wing to switch to the right of Alonso, while Özil moved to the far right. An improvised trivote, it provoked a barrage of long-balls that spoiled the game. When Özil scored, following a counter-attack by Ronaldo and Benzema, it was in Madrid’s only attack on goal. In his attempt to close the match down at 1–1 Mourinho ordered a complete withdrawal from Bayern’s half, as well as adding some brawn to the midfield by replacing Di María with Granero, Benzema with Higuaín and Özil with Marcelo. The Brazilian took up his position on the left of the trivote with so much frustration and so little enthusiasm that he seemed to be making every effort to get himself sent off. The kick he gave Müller should have been a red card. But referee Howard Webb missed it.
A feint and a change of direction from Lahm on the edge of the area sent Coentrão to the ground in the 90th minute. The German crossed the ball with the outside of his right foot and no one got in front of Mario Gómez, who stabbed the ball home. It was the winner on the night, making it 2–1. And it was the goal that would completely transform the tie.
After Webb blew the final whistle, the revolt that had been organised in the visitors’ dressing room had only one theme: the stubbornness of the manager to ‘make his mark’, as the players said, even if it meant harming his own team’s chances. Arbeloa, Higuaín, Lass, Callejón, Casillas and Ramos were among the most forceful of those who spoke. They did not question the conservatism of Mourinho’s approach nor the changes he made, which they also judged to have been wrong, with anything like the vehemence that they criticised his decision of who to play down the left. They said Coentrão was a problem; he was no better defensively than Marcelo and offered nothing going forward; they regretted that by insisting on his place in the starting line-up Mourinho had jeopardised everyone else’s hard work. They said that lately the impression had been given that the squad was there merely to serve Coentrão’s promotion. Now getting quite angry, they reeled off his errors: in Moscow he gave away a useless foul that enabled CSKA to draw 1–1, in Cyprus the team did not function properly until he was replaced by Marcelo, and against Barça at the Bernabéu in both the league and cup he made significant errors in marking Fàbregas, Iniesta and Messi that prevented his team winning the game.
To point to the failings of Coentrão was, if possible, even more relevant than usual. For a counter-attacking team like Madrid, according to the majority of the players, there was a massive difference between taking a 1–1 or a 2–1 into the home leg. The 2–1 meant that Bayern could go to the Bernabéu, sit back and wait for Madrid to attack them. It was exactly what they did not want after two years of being coached on defending deep and playing quick counter-attacking football themselves. They had lost the ability to play in compressed spaces and take the initiative in matches.
‘Now we’re not going to have any space,’ they said. ‘We get choked by teams who stick everyone in the area. It happened against Sporting. So how’s it not going to happen against Bayern?’ Their feeling of impotence was reflected in a remark that was repeated more than once: ‘It’s all Mourinho’s fault.’
The décima that was so very attainable in the eyes of the media close to the club was now transformed into an odyssey in the corridors of the home dressing room.
‘When are we ever going to have such a good draw?’ they asked themselves. ‘When are we ever going to have the return leg at home again in so many ties?’ The players believed that in Munich the coach had compromised a historic opportunity.
In the return leg Madrid played with the same formation and the same men as in Munich, except for Marcelo, who, as Kaká had predicted, came in for Coentrão. Bayern took to the field with Neuer, Lahm, Boateng, Badstuber, Alaba, Schweinsteiger, Luiz Gustavo, Robben, Kroos, Ribéry and Mario Gómez.
Mourinho told his players to press in medium-block, never taking the defensive line any further than 20 yards from the edge of the area. Madrid made a thunderous start. Alonso released Di María with some probing passes, Khedira pushed forward in search of the second ball and Neuer did not take long to make his first save. Another run and cross from Di María ended with Alaba handling the ball in the box, and Ronaldo scoring the resulting penalty. Before the quarter-hour he was put through by Özil and beat Neuer to make it 2–0. Bayern were not to be intimidated. Robben missed with only Casillas to beat and Khedira cleared a shot from Ribéry. It was enough to make Mourinho come into the technical area, shouting and gesticulating for his players to drop deeper. The team sat back in low-block. Anti-climax. Bayern exploited the new situation by taking control of the middle of the pitch with Schweinsteiger and Kroos. Madrid were in full retreat mode when Pepe brought down Gómez in the area after 27 minutes, with Robben scoring the equaliser from the penalty spot.
The half-time team-talk would for ever stay in the minds of the players. Mourinho took to the floor and addressed his audience. According to witnesses the message was the one that had been ruminating for months.
‘Señores,’ he said, ‘we must be intelligent …’
The use of the word ‘intelligent’ in the euphemistic language of the manager amounted to requesting that the players renounce their childish scruples. They had to leave to one side the ball, their vanity and their pride. To explain what he wanted he said that the game had become complicated; they had to keep pressing in low-block in order to conserve energy because they were deep into a long season and their energy levels were low. As if the instruction were based on a detailed half-time study of each of his players’ fitness, he told them to stop pressing at goal-kicks and throw-ins because it was wasted energy. ‘We’ll wait for them a bit,’ he said. ‘We’ll float.’ But if they won the ball back they could allow themselves to counter-attack without losing their shape at the back.
The talk had an immediate effect. Until that point the game had belonged to the players. Now it passed into the hands of the coach. For some players the instructions might have served a purpose, but this was a dressing room containing some of the best players in the world. On hearing that it was best to surrender both the ball and most of the pitch to the opposition they became demoralised.
This change on the pitch silenced much of Madrid’s support from the stands. As the team became more and more reclusive, the home fans quietened down. Meanwhile, the Bayern supporters could be heard for the first time. The decrease in the volume coming from the home fans made Mourinho furious and he showed his frustration to his assistants by pointing to the stands. Every time that Bayern got anywhere near Casillas’s area, he vented his frustration:
‘These supporters are an embarrassment.’
Madrid bled until the end, when penalties sealed their fate. Casillas saved from Alaba and Mario Gómez, but Ronaldo, Kaká and Ramos missed their spot-kicks. Madrid’s elimination, as far as the players were concerned, was in large part the fault of Mourinho, who had made more bad decisions than good. The players worked out how many times their manager had
complicated matches for them since 2011, coming up with the four most significant examples: the Super Cup, the semi-final of the Copa del Rey against Barça and then these two games against Bayern.
The displeasure was both profound and universal. Mourinho did not want to stay at Madrid. In March he began conversations with Manchester City through his agent Jorge Mendes but the City option evaporated when they were proclaimed Premier League champions. As far as Chelsea were concerned, he reached an agreement with Roman Abramovich. But there was an unexpected twist. The London club, under the stewardship of Roberto Di Matteo, lifted the Champions League trophy in Munich on 19 May. The triumph persuaded both Mourinho and Abramovich that it would be best to undo the agreement. It seemed politically costly to the Russian to sack the man who had just won the most important trophy in the club’s history. For Mourinho, taking over a club in transition from one generation of players to another did not appeal, especially with little to gain and with expectations higher than ever. Such a commitment went completely against the challenges he usually took on.
It seemed as if Pérez and Mourinho had enjoyed a magical communion in the spring of 2010. But two years later this magic was gone. Not even the party to celebrate the winning of the league provoked anything more than cold pragmatism between the two men. Publicly, they preached indissoluble unity but when on their own and in private, surrounded by their respective entourages, they contemplated futures in which neither man needed the other. They both understood very well that the exorbitant amounts of money paid out had not been satisfactorily repaid with sporting success.
In spite of the fantasy that surrounded Madrid, mixed up with the fanaticism, Mourinho’s communications strategies, and the constant generation of excitement and anticipation, the two principal actors appreciated that this was not a movie being played out on the big screen; this was harsh football reality. The destruction of Barça’s exemplary image in the media and on the pitch was as much an unfulfilled target as winning the Champions League. As the summer of 2012 advanced, Pérez and Mourinho showed signs of caution, even of complete resignation.
On 22 May 2012, after exhausting his search for a route back to England, Mourinho renewed his Madrid contract, prolonging his link to the club until 2016. The news surprised the majority of his players as they prepared for the European Championships in Poland and Ukraine. The trophy remained in Spanish hands, with Casillas, Alonso and Ramos being three of the team’s most important players. The internationals rejoined the squad in Madrid on 28 July, then flew out for the pre-season in Los Angeles. There they found a mysteriously transformed Mourinho.
The coach seemed to have subtly distanced himself from his Portuguese players. Coentrão, Pepe and Ronaldo – the players with whom he talked most during the team meet-ups before matches – did not now attract him as much as the recently crowned European champions. The retention of the title had lent an aura of success – and personal appeal – to Casillas, Ramos, Alonso and their peers that Spanish players had never previously enjoyed. Mourinho shared a joke or exchanged opinions with them at every opportunity. He wanted to be on the right side of Ramos:
‘Sergio! Where did you go on holiday? You look very tanned …’
Footballers tend to be jealous. Pepe, Coentrão and Ronaldo were indignant – and incredulous – at hearing such pleasantries; these players, beaten by Spain in the semi-finals, now felt displaced. The Spanish, whose mistrust of Mourinho if anything increased amid the new niceties, were convinced that if they had lost to Portugal in Donetsk their situation would have remained suffocating. Even Arbeloa, who in public appeared to be a Mourinhista, compared Mourinho’s intentions during the tournament to the planning of a military coup. Everyone knew that the sporting prestige of the winner would translate into power and that Mourinho had crossed his fingers for a Portuguese victory. Had they won, Gestifute, the company that co-ordinated his representation, took it as a given that the manager would have wanted to sign Meireles and Bosingwa that same summer, both players being represented by Mendes. The plan was to augment the Portuguese colony, the club within a club. But, after the Euros, conditions were no longer favourable. It was against this backdrop that when Mourinho saw Ramos he winked:
‘I like your haircut. Is there a stylist in the family?’
Casillas tried to avoid the boss. Every time he was interviewed he tried to make it clear that he belonged to a quite different school. He repeated this as if it were a formula, even though what he was being asked had nothing to do with such an answer. He would then be riled to see that some publications, when they edited his answers, cut out that particular part.
‘I possess the values taught to me by Hierro, Raúl, Redondo, Roberto Carlos, Guardiola, Abelardo or Luís Enrique,’ he’d say. The inclusion of Guardiola was no coincidence, and Mourinho was furious when he heard it.
The summer passed peacefully in between all the frivolities, the political conjecture and subliminal messages, but when it seemed that behind one triviality there was nothing more than another triviality, a fire storm started, one that was to grow to an enormous size and create all sorts of unwanted repercussions.
Ronaldo was reserved from the first day back at work. He avoided everyone, not just the Spanish. He even distanced himself from Pepe, who had previously been his shield, and passed the hours in the company of Coentrão. The kid was irritated. One day in the United States a fan threw a ball at him for him to sign; he refused to do so because it hit him or because he had got out of bed the wrong side, and sent it back by blasting it into the crowd. The rest of the squad thought his irritation was a result of his failure to win the Ballon d’Or. A Spanish team-mate believed that his desire for the trophy was more than an obsession; it was like ‘a sickness’. But no one knew for certain because he had been silent for almost a month, scarcely holding a conversation with anyone.
In the last week of August 2012 Madrid beat Barcelona in the Super Cup on away goals. The first leg ended 3–2, and it was 2–1 in the return fixture. This was Barça’s first tournament with Tito Vilanova in charge, the man whom Mourinho had assaulted the previous year having become Guardiola’s successor in the dugout. The effect of the change seemed to be immediately obvious with Barça’s tactical misjudgements during the Super Cup. They displayed a surprising mix of indolence and dislocation in defence, and had not seemed so vulnerable since 2008.
The league kicked off at the Bernabéu on 19 September with a 1–1 draw against a Valencia side of no great substance. It was a poor game. At the end, Mourinho stormed into the dressing room and launched into his first tirade of the season. Even though he had developed a childish devotion to his Spanish players over the summer, old habits were hard to kick. He said that some players had still not come back from their holidays and that he had observed a lack of hunger on the pitch. His aggressive manner was nothing special; what was new was the disinterest with which most of the players listened to his diatribe. For most of them it was as if he did not exist. They showered, changed and went home.
The only player who seemed to be affected, and not by the words of the coach, was Ronaldo. He had not overcome his melancholy. Jorge Mendes never stopped talking about the Ballon d’Or every time they spoke together. Ronaldo, who found in the protective influence of his agent a substitute for the father he had lost as a boy, had suggested that he would only have a chance of shifting Messi from the throne he had occupied since 2009 by winning the Euros. With the tournament lost and gone, so were all of his chances of winning the individual award. He felt frustrated, something he needed to get over, but the ruling member of his entourage did nothing to help him. Mendes dedicated a large part of his energy to designing new grand projects that centred on distinctive publicity campaigns for his top player. He wanted to be considered as the number one agent because he represented the world’s number ones.
With the aim of making these projects a reality, Mendes became Diego Maradona’s agent, and in 2010 he was the force behind the creation of a para
llel world football gala called the Globe Soccer Awards, to be celebrated in Dubai. He would attend this celebration as master of ceremonies with his team, introducing various awards tailor-made for himself and his players. Mendes is the only person who has won the award for ‘best agent’ – the first of its kind – coming top in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
If the existence of Messi frustrated Ronaldo’s dream, the strength of the Spanish national team took Ronaldo even further away from the Ballon d’Or prize he sought. The evening held in Dubai has the lavish setting of the Persian Gulf in its favour, but it is FIFA who are associated with the prestige of the golden ball. For many years Mourinho and his agent had repeated to Ronaldo that the Argentinian footballer was the one he had to beat. They called him ‘El Enano’ (‘The Dwarf’) and entertained themselves discussing his shortcomings. The coach assured Ronaldo that it was the political power of Barcelona that kept Messi on the throne, and that it could not last for ever. At some stage in the summer of 2012 Ronaldo realised that fantasy and reality do not always coincide, and that what the people who had always believed in him had told him might not be the truth.
Ronaldo’s troubles explained his dark mood in training. Missing the frenetic spark of his best days, he had not scored in the first two weeks of the season, which marked a major dip for him. In the second match, Madrid lost in Getafe and were already five points behind Barcelona. The dressing room was like a blast furnace. The group of players headed by Madrid’s senior players turned their back on Mourinho again. They held that the team would never make up the gap in the table, although they insisted that this was not down to any lack of competitiveness. Winning the title – such a necessity last season – had not taken away their edge. One league title was certainly not enough, hardly satisfying their thirst for glory. Teams don’t exhaust themselves because of the trophies they have won but because of a breakdown in unity and togetherness. The majority of the players, for one reason or another, confessed to being unable to respond to a coach in whom they had lost belief.
The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho Page 21
