Mourinho’s risky roll of the dice
The Manchester United manager’s bravado has morphed over the years into bitter sulkiness
‘You want to know the team?” José Mourinho teased, successfully drawing a unified chorus of “Yes!” from the gathered press. “I can say my team and Barça’s team … and the referee.”
He then proceeded to do just that. “Deco, Xavi, Eto’o, Giuly, Ronaldinho …”
The Portuguese manager of Manchester United successfully predicted the First XI Frank Rijkaard would roll out in the 2005 Champions League last 16 megaclash between Chelsea and Barcelona at Camp Nou. The Blues would ultimately progress to the next round 5-2 on aggregate.
At this point, a few months into his first tenure at the newly rich London outfit, the media were already well acquainted with his polarising brand of bravado. How could they not be, when one of his first actions as manager was famously to declare himself the “Special One”? English football had arguably not experienced such magnetism since the glory days of Brian Clough.
The mind games played with Rijkaard at the time were, however, far from just idle chatter. They represent the power that weapons such as microphones could produce if wielded correctly. Getting under your opposite number’s skin, controlling the narrative, publicly protecting your players … these are as much a modern manager’s job as team talks and substitutions. And no one excelled in those categories like Mourinho.
Fast forward to 2018 and there’s a significantly different figure at the helm at Old Trafford — a figure that, though still sharp-tongued, appears increasingly sulky and bitter. Even years prior to his Manchester United post, the spuriously rechristened “Happy One” began to adopt an increasingly grumpy persona.
Gone are the days of filling the press rooms with rapturous laughter. The jokes and stories of getting drunk with Sir Alex Ferguson are replaced by boorish Arsène Wenger barbs and proclamations that Rafael Benítez’s wife would do well to perform better in the kitchen.
More than anything, his sermons are now permeated with refereeing complaints and excuses — blaming everything and everyone else for bad performances while displaying the self-awareness of a dinner table.
Bemoaning opposition conduct, meanwhile, has been hilariously hypocritical. After Antonio Conte celebrated the last goal of a 4-0 thumping last season, Mourinho went into a tirade about the show of disrespect.
No doubt Mourinho’s 2004 knee slide that took him halfway across the Old Trafford pitch during Porto’s famous victory there was in good taste. So was, of course, his zealous jumping jacks after Inter Milan’s 2010 Camp Nou victory that prompted the ground staff to turn on the sprinklers in an effort to get him off the pitch.
Though it’s all fun and games to talk about what a grinch Mourinho has become, it’s increasingly evident that such a divisive attitude is finally beginning to take a toll on pushing out results — and will continue to do so.
The dismissive and negative attitude came to a head this week as he took aim at a legend.
“I think the only thing Paul Scholes does is criticise,” he lashed. “I don’t think he comments, I think he criticises, which is a different thing.” The comments came after the Premier League’s most expensive player, Paul Pogba, received a healthy dollop of disparaging reviews in recent weeks.
“Not every one of us has to be phenomenal like he was as a player. That does not mean that we all have to be phenomenal.”
From there, the tone got a bit more personal.
“It’s not Paul’s fault that he made much more money than Paul Scholes. It’s just the way football is. I think Scholes will be in history as a phenomenal player, not as a pundit. I prefer to look at him as a phenomenal player that gave so much to the club that I am proud to represent.”
Finally, Mourinho pointed out that the former England international could never do what he does.
“If Paul one day decides to be a manager I wish that he can be 25% as successful as myself,” he said. “Fifty percent of that is 12.5 silverware, 25% is around six. If he’s 25%, he’ll be quite happy.”
The snipe is the latest against the group of legends-turned-pundits he calls the “kings of rock 'n roll” — Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville. “I think they would love to be here. They would love to be at the club and that’s a problem I cannot resolve.”
No doubt Mourinho is well aware of the reverberations that will echo from striking at the pillars on which greatness was propped. The question is whether he is wilfully ignoring
Gone are the days of filling the press rooms with rapturous laughter