Aura around ‘Special One’ fading fast
“PLEASE don’t call me arrogant. I’m not one from the bottle... I think I’m a special one.”
And with that, Jose Mourinho had unforgettably announced himself in English football. It was 14 years ago, but it seemed somehow even further in the mists of time on Friday when he talked and talked and talked about something called “football heritage”. The great irony was how he linked it all to Manchester United, when many of us suspected that it was really all about himself.
A narrative was surely being constructed to excuse how United, despite spending around £300-million (R5-billion) in transfers fees since he became manager, had exited the Champions League against Sevilla; to justify how, even with the Premier League’s highest wage bill and turnover, United finished sixth last season and will be somewhere between second and fifth this time; and, perhaps most painfully of all, to explain how Mourinho’s United are being so outperformed by Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City – both in style and results – at a stage when they have each had a comparable amount of time and resource with which to work.
The strange thing about Friday and then the follow-up attack on his players’ courage and personality on Saturday was that none of it was really necessary. Sevilla had been a bad defeat, but his position is not under particular threat. United are in second place in the Premier League and have reached an FA Cup semifinal.
Mourinho is not doing an especially bad job. He is not doing a great job, either, and my own theory is that what really grates is how he no longer carries the mystique among players, fans and even journalists that once came with the pretty-much universal acceptance that, yes, he was the best in the world.
Football heritage, after all, is also that Mourinho is the “special one”. Football heritage was that, in seven completed seasons in the incredible first phase of his career between 2002 and 2010, his teams won six league titles. Football heritage was that he also won two Champions League titles and quickly inspired Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan to genuinely historic achievements.
Phase two of Mourinho’s career takes in the seven completed seasons since 2011. And it is a rather different story. He has been at generally richer clubs and yet he has taken none of them to a Champions League final.
He has won two league titles and other lesser trophies, but also has finishes of third and sixth to go with a sacking shortly before Christmas of the 2015-16 season, when Chelsea were languishing in 16th place in the table.
If we are talking heritage, it should also be noted that Real Madrid have won the Champions League in three out of the four seasons since he left the Bernabeu, with much the same group of players. Chelsea achieved a similar uplift under Antonio Conte in the Premier League.
It is, of course, still perfectly possible to construct an argument in favour of Mourinho’s work at Real Madrid, his second spell at Chelsea and now Manchester United. But that is not really the point. The salient fact is that he is quite evidently not delivering as he once was. Whether that is down to a wider change in football styles or just simply the extra competition is immaterial in one sense, because another factor now feels even more relevant.
In results and performances – if never personality – Mourinho has been steadily becoming just what he promised us he was not. And that is one from the bottle. —