Shush, it’s dystopian football!

CALL HIM The Shushing One. The first time he tried to quiet the crowd it was aimed at Liverpool fans during the League Cup final of 2005. On Saturday it was a message to his own fans - in the moment of victory.

You don’t need a Masters’ in Mourinho studies to know which was the more significant. Even if part of it may have been ego – stealing the show although there wasn’t much to steal – he was attempting to quell the murmurs.

You’d have thought Anthony Martial’s winner had already done that judging by the huge roar of relief that greeted it at Old Trafford. It was the same in the KL pub where I watched – as a neutral surrounded by Devils’ fans.

That he felt it necessary to make the point even after the player he had brought on to boos from the crowd had done the business told its own tale. He could have gloated about his masterstroke but, no, like a tin-pot dictator, he preferred to shush the dissenting voices.

He repeated the message to the press afterwards. “Some people speak too much,” he told them. “Calm down, relax a little bit. Relax.” Clearly, the boos and the headlines post-Huddersfield and post-Anfield had got to him.

With antennae as sharp as his tongue, Mourinho is anything but a tin-pot manager. And he’s very much aware of the exalted seat he’s occupying and the exalted traditions of the club – as he made abundantly clear in the grovelling letter he wrote to get the job.

His predecessor, Louis van Gaal, did not “get” United and was taking them only sideways. Turgidly. Fans understandably pined for the Alex Ferguson era but Mourinho knew he could not turn the clock back. No one can and for the Portuguese it