The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho

by Torres, Diego

  In late January 2013 the breakdown in the Madrid dressing room was rivalled only by the deterioration of the mood in Barcelona’s. Guardiola and Vilanova had always said that Mourinho would do their motivational work for them very effectively. The fact that Guardiola would be toasted with Cava after winning the Champions League in 2011 says much for the impetus which Mourinho had given players such as Messi, Xavi, Busquets and Alves.

  Casillas’s team-mates in the Spanish national squad told him that by 2010 complacency had begun to spread through Barcelona. Mourinho’s strategies of agitation, far from accelerating this, actually delayed it. In 2012 several players tried to make him see this but Mourinho replied wryly: ‘Very good! You’re all so smart.’

  Casillas, Ramos, Higuaín, Marcelo, Khedira, Arbeloa, Carvalho, Kaká, Özil and Benzema were sure of this in 2013. ‘If we’d spared them the psychological warfare Barça would have disintegrated by themselves,’ said one Spanish international. When they had to face Barça in the cup and the league between 30 January and 2 March, most of the squad had decided to manage themselves. They proposed not to criticise referees, match schedules or the opposition. There was to be no more systematic violence or protests on the pitch towards the referee. They had to put an end to the unsportsmanlike gestures and the stupidity of not greeting a team-mate in the Spanish national squad because of what the boss said. Everyone in the group agreed apart from Arbeloa, who understood what his colleagues were about but who wanted to take care of his relationship with the powers that be to save his contract with the club.

  Alonso also did things his own way, as mysterious as usual. Signed by Valdano, the Basque midfielder was not the sort of player that Mourinho usually went for, what with Alonso’s history, affiliations and physical conditioning. Mourinho considered him too slow for the job. In the players’ meeting in Santander in 2011, Alonso was one of the most fervent critics of Mourinho’s tactical approach. Over time, however, he stopped going to meals with his Spanish team-mates and would approach Mourinho to chat with him and to agree with him, although it had nothing to do with what he had said elsewhere. When Mourinho proposed targeting Casillas he enjoyed Alonso’s silent understanding. When the players were told to touch Messi’s face because, it was said, the Argentinian was infuriated by it, Alonso was right behind Arbeloa in the queue to offer to do so. ‘But what are you doing?’ Piqué asked him. If his vision, his tactical intelligence and his ability to organise the team with this passing were not entirely convincing, his demonstration of extreme loyalty convinced Mourinho that Alonso was an ally in his crusade.

  Madrid’s players had two different approaches. Some, like Varane, Arbeloa, Essien, Alonso, Khedira, Di María and Coentrão, played exactly in accord with Mourinho’s wishes. Others, like Ramos, Higuaín, Özil, Benzema and Ronaldo, introduced their own personal touches. Against Mourinho’s wishes, attackers would sometimes drop deep to receive the ball in midfield or move out to the flanks to open up space and create opportunities. The presence of Ramos in central defence completely changed the way the team played. In the three clásicos of 2013 he pushed the defensive line up towards the centre-circle with an unusual calm and mastery of the situation. Pushed back into their own half, the pressure exerted by Madrid on Barcelona was unbearable, and Messi was kept away from the area where he was most dangerous. The manager did not agree with such a high line of pressure but he consented to it because the effects were stunning. Lacking the direction of Vilanova, who was receiving intensive treatment in New York, Barcelona were defeated in the cup (1–1 and 1–3) and in the league (2–1), and Real Madrid enjoyed their happiest month of the season.

  An accidental kick from Arbeloa broke Casillas’s left hand during the fourth round of the cup at the Mestalla on 23 January. He would need two months to recover so Madrid signed Diego López as his replacement. The incident meant Ramos became first-team captain.

  Voted best defender in the 2012 Euros, the former Sevilla player, about to turn 27, was finally where he had dreamed of being all his life. There are some players who find fulfilment by giving assists, others achieve nirvana by scoring goals or concentrating on dribbling, and a few enjoy organising. For Ramos, the most exciting, the most distinguished, the most glorious gift the profession has to offer is the opportunity to take charge of a team. He was one of the best full-backs in the world, although he could sometimes lose his position or play irresponsibly like an individual rather than a team-player. As a centre-back, he was unbeatable. The responsibility made him stronger. He was comfortable making decisions and delighted in directing his team-mates around the pitch. He did so with his voice but also with whistles, perfect for abbreviating instructions and for being instantly recognisable in the heat of battle. Ramos, a lover of flamenco, and of singing and dancing, had come up with various short musical codes. Each note meant an order on the pitch and his team-mates knew them all by heart. Pressing, retreating, squeezing and covering, calls for assistance and the order to push out were all conducted by a medley of whistles.

  The 1–0 defeat in Granada on 2 February in the 22nd league match of the season was another storm cloud, disrupting the period of relative calm, and a setback to Pérez’s advisors, who had come out in the media with message that things had changed: ‘The Madrid of 100 points is back!’

  Pérez spoke with Ramos in Granada. The president asked him why Madrid had lost and Ramos answered with his usual candour. He said the team were lucky to win the league in 2012, because their relationship with the manager was already very difficult and achieving something so great in such a difficult atmosphere was truly exceptional. He explained that players noticed that when Mourinho felt strong he took the opportunity to help ‘his own’ and disregarded the rest. Ramos also said that Mourinho’s repeated complaints about their lack of professionalism had damaged the squad more than anything. To expect the team to give everything for this man went against the natural order of things. According to some board members Ramos’s comments did not please Pérez one bit.

  The victory over Barça in the cup on 24 February made Pérez glad to have kept Mourinho. Having solved the issue of continuity, his grand survival plan was to play with all the chips, to seduce both players and coach equally. He told the squad to manage itself, saying that Mourinho was not so important, at the same time as offering Mourinho more power in return for winning the Champions League. The directors closest to Pérez say that what he was really trying to do was to gain time to win Madrid’s tenth European Cup, to keep Mourinho, letting him get rid of whoever he wanted to within good reason and without too great political consequences, and give him total control in the transfer market. Mourinho’s blacklist had become increasingly full: Casillas, Ramos, Higuaín, Marcelo, Özil and Benzema were all marked, although Pérez hoped to save Ramos, Benzema and Özil.

  The president was willing to stick with Mourinho in spite of everything. Without knowing that they were taking part in a poll, Peréz sent staff members to ask the players how they felt. When asked if the manager should continue in the 2013–14 season, of the 22 members of the team only seven responded positively. Of the 15 who said no, one was Ronaldo, and six added that if Mourinho remained they should be allowed to leave on friendly terms. Özil and Ramos were in this latter group. Meanwhile, the opinion of the supporters varied according to results. To those fans who said they wanted the manager, one other question was asked: why? Between 70 and 80 per cent indicated that it was because when the team lost, he was able to excuse it by pointing to external causes.

  The passage to the quarter-finals of the Champions League was overwhelming for Madrid. If the 1–1 first-leg score against Manchester United at the Bernabéu gave the English team the nice cushion of an away goal, the 1–0 scoreline that followed Ramos’s own goal at Old Trafford in the 48th minute after a mistake from Varane gave the impression of settling the tie. But it did not happen that way because of a peculiar incident. In the 57th minute Nani lifted his boot in an attempt to control the ball, not having
seen Arbeloa arrive from the side, and the Spaniard felt the full force of the attacker’s studs. Cüneyt Çakir, the Turkish referee, decided it was dangerous play and sent Nani off. It was the only contentious decision that he made on a night when he could have been much more draconian. Madrid’s superiority lasted ten minutes, and in the time it took Ferguson and United to get over the Nani decision, first Modrić and then Ronaldo scored, making it 1–2. Madrid ran the last quarter of an hour down, clearing balls out of their own penalty area. Mourinho has never been so generous to an opponent as he was in the press conference afterwards.

  ‘The best team lost tonight,’ he said.

  Pérez felt a great sense of relief. It reaffirmed the sense that he had made the right decision when he convened the board to announce a decision made months earlier: he wanted Mourinho to see out his contract until 2016. In his speech he admitted that if he could go back in time three years he might not repeat the signing of Mourinho. He added that he was also not completely convinced by the team’s play. But he justified the contradiction by asking his peers what they would have done had they been in the same boat:

  ‘I understood that if he was successful, we would be successful, too; and if he failed, we would also fail.’

  The president’s certainty in front of the board contrasted with the poisoned atmosphere on the trip to Istanbul, where Madrid were playing in the quarter-finals against Galatasaray. A club employee noted with surprise that even Coentrão, very much one of ‘theirs’, shunned Mourinho. The tension, discussions and blame between the players and their coach had given way to a deathly indifference. Only José Mario, Mourinho’s son, seemed completely at ease with his father on the bus and in training, while Karanka, Louro, Rui Faria and Di María took turns to entertain him. The delegation stayed at the Kempinski Hotel in the Ciragan Palace, once a seat of the Ottoman sultans. With a splendid view over the Bosphorus, the cheapest room in the hotel cost €800 a night. Someone saw Pérez and Mourinho exchange a few words.

  ‘I cannot continue here with this squad, you know,’ said the coach. To which Pérez responded with his characteristic poker face.

  Casillas’s recovery posed a fresh question for the coaching staff, so Mourinho called a meeting in early April. Rui Faria, Karanka and Louro, among others, were all in attendance. One of those present tells how the manager stated that they had two options. The first was to put Casillas in the team for the semi-finals of the Champions League. If they ended up winnng the final at Wembley no one would remember the goalkeeper, and if they lost, in Mourinho’s words, ‘all the shit would be for him’. The second option was to stick with Diego López. At this point Mourinho winked at Rui Faria and told them that if they won without Casillas it would be perfect, and if they lost it didn’t matter anyway. The public could say what they wanted, but there was nothing to worry about ‘as we already have what we have’. He repeated the words: ‘As we already have what we have …’ The formal offer from Chelsea was the ‘what we have’. There was nothing signed, but Roman Abramovich’s word was sufficient. The emergency exit was clear.

  Mendes had received the offer from Chelsea in the last week of March. The negotiations had taken more than three months to come up with a final document. The receipt of the contractual papers in Gestifute, however, left a bittersweet aftertaste. The joy of having a contract ready for his signature contrasted with Mourinho’s annoyance on noting that between those clauses that had been mutually agreed Abramovich had imposed clear limits on his autonomy as a manager. The small reduction in base salary from what he earned in Madrid (about €10 million net) was not as upsetting to Mourinho and Mendes as the Russian owner’s attempt to limit Mourinho’s role to the coaching of the team. The contract stipulated that the technical structure of the club would remain intact, particularly with respect to who was responsible for deciding which players the club would buy. Mourinho could let it be known who he would like to sell, and if he needed a player he could say in what position and with what characteristics. But the decision on who would or would not be signed would continue to be a matter for the club and its owner.

  Abramovich did not forget that between 2004 and 2007 Mourinho had tried to fill the team with players linked to Mendes and his friends. He did this with such devotion that he marginalised men such as Arjen Robben and Shevchenko, signed on the initiative of Abramovich. According to sources at Chelsea, the club’s owner had studied Mourinho at Madrid and had watched how he sidelined a Ballon d’Or winner like Kaká because he stood in the way of his strategic plans. To avoid this, he vetoed Mourinho’s access to the market. This limitation seemed like a forewarning to Mendes. Upset, the agent and his client decided not to sign the contract and continued negotiating, waiting for circumstances to strengthen their position. They calculated that if Madrid won the Champions League Mourinho could claim more power from Chelsea.

  The draw meant that Madrid would play once again play Dortmund in the Champions League, this time in the semi-finals. The first leg was set for 24 April at the Westfalenstadion. It was a beautiful morning when, in the modest NH hotel where the Spanish journalists were staying alongside the main railway station, Pérez appeared with a group of directors. They had spent the night there, they said. The president was in a jubilant mood. He had not stopped receiving jokes on his mobile phone about the 4–0 scoreline from Bayern’s win over Barça in Munich the previous night. The journalists who gathered round were encouraged when they saw that he was available for a relaxed chat for the first time in years. Sitting in the dining room after breakfast, they listened to the president in amazement.

  Pérez said the team had only played well in four matches that season, although blame for this should not to be placed at the coach’s door. Mourinho had done everything right and it had been the players’ fault. They believed, he said, that having won the league in 2012 everything had already been achieved and they barely raised their game to win the Super Cup. Mourinho had been right to shake the group up, looking for a reaction, not picking Casillas, Özil, Ramos and others in order to provoke them to compete. He wanted to give them a warning. But they did not respond. Ronaldo’s melancholy state did not help, in the opinion of the president, to save those two months of apathy with which the team began the season.

  In conclusion Pérez said that footballers were generally capricious and frivolous people. Sometimes they were confused by the power that the money and the fame gave them. In this regard, he noted that Mourinho’s squad was much more difficult to manage because it consisted of a selection of the best players in the world. Borussia Dortmund, however, was ‘a team of children’ trained ‘by a child’s coach’. Pérez’s had complete confidence in reaching the final.

  In the midday heat, the historic centre of Dortmund was filled with Madrid supporters, particularly the Biergarten in the Marienplatz. The loudest fans sang ‘Pepe, mátalo! Pepe, mátalo! Pepe, mátalooooooo!’, meaning ‘Pepe, kill him!’

  His violent approach had made Pepe a cult figure among the most fanatical fans at the Bernabéu. This group, known as the Ultras Sur, worshipped Mourinho. Mourinho, in turn, had a natural inclination towards Pepe. The central defender was one of the few men at his disposal who had placed all his attributes on the altar of obedience to the coach.

  Before the games against Manchester United Mourinho was asked if Ronaldo was the best player he had ever managed in his career. In response he explained why he appreciated other players more:

  ‘Cristiano is the most fantastic player I’ve coached. But I always say I’ve been very lucky because I’ve had people who’ve given everything for me. That’s why Cristiano doesn’t have a privileged position in my heart in relation to others.’

  Pepe was one of those ‘others’. He was famous for killing and dying metaphorically, although sometimes bordering on the literal. He had come back as a substitute after an ankle operation, but on 24 April he was picked by Mourinho to occupy the centre of defence alongside Raphaël Varane. His commitment to Varane, a 20
-year-old French international whose performances had been extraordinary, inspired mistrust in the dressing room because since the start of the season Mendes had shown great interest in representing him. Varane’s father and agent held conversations at Christmas, and an agreement was eventually settled. The manager believed that the defence was of vital importance and wanted to put it in the hands of people whom he trusted. Ramos did not belong to that select group.

  Ramos moved to right-back, Coentrão started on the left, Alonso, Khedira and Modrić made up the midfield, and Ronaldo and Higuaín played up front. Once again Özil played on the right wing, from where he would have less influence. The squad thought that Özil would be on the bench but he played because Di María’s wife had given birth and the Argentinian had only arrived in Germany that day.

  The team-talk did not command the attention of the players as would have been expected before a Champions League semi-final. Since the morning the Radisson Hotel had become a hive of hurried meetings, curses, calls to mobiles and hectic exchanges of information. The players were exasperated when some of the journalists who had been present at the NH told them what Pérez had said – that the president considered them the main culprits for losing the league and yet believed their coach had done everything right. Ronaldo, Higuaín and Ozil paced around furiously until an hour before the game. They formed Madrid’s forward line and it was to them that Mourinho directed the key part of his speech. He stressed to them that if they could score one goal then the job would be done.