SORRY, JOSE, UNITED BOSSES SHOULD NOT BE COMPLAINING
AROUND the time Alex Ferguson was embarking on what would be his first title-winning season with Manchester United, Kim Basinger and Ozzy Osbourne were taking a very unlikely duet into the charts.
Shake Your Head was a remix of a song by funk group Was (Not Was). Its lyrics were a list of impossible, outlandish things.
“You can’t teach Shakespeare to a monkey,” announces Ozzy. “You can’t sing under water,” reasons Kim. A third voice, undoubtedly that of an uncredited Madonna, chips in with the answer to all this futility. “Let’s go to bed,” she decides.
José Mourinho must have felt like pulling the covers over his head, too, in recent weeks, as he contemplates his own inventory of the hopeless and impractical. Mounting injuries, and an unrelenting stretch of fixture commitments.
Yet here’s what he can’t do. He can’t complain. Well, he can – but he won’t find a sympathetic audience. Just like Ozzy’s plan for a baboon Hamlet, it’s a non-starter. The manager of Manchester United is not permitted a moan. Not about schedules, not about injuries. However unjust the circumstances, he can’t win this argument.
Why? Simply because he’s the manager of Manchester United. He’s got it all going for him. The finest players, the biggest budget, the most fans, the indulgence of Uefa and the presumption that referees bend to his whims. All the best want to play for him, all the coaches want to be him. If there is a good break going it is presumed he will catch it.
So when Mourinho laments that his players are tired, that the Premier League won’t adjust their timetable to suit and Thursday-night football is a horrible burden, the sound of scornful raspberries is deafening.
Those outside Old Trafford merely see a club that can afford to drop £90 million (R1.55 billion) on a single player, or buy the star turn from a rival and place him in the reserves; others recall that in 1998-99 United kept a season going successfully on three fronts until its very last kick. Between November 29 and December 29 in that campaign they played nine matches. What’s the difference?
Even now with injuries ravaging his team – as Mourinho predicted they would – there is little compassion. A former United player, from that treble-winning era, curled his lip when the conversation turned to Mourinho’s complaints recently.
“How many does he think we had to play?” he queried. “It’s Manchester United. You expect that. You get on with it.”
United took 62 games winning the treble. If they reach the Europa League final this season, they will amass 63.
Mourinho will frequently hear his views dismissed, unless he tunes out the noise around his club. Indeed, there are some who argue his moans are counter-productive; that they as good as contribute to fatigue, giving players excuses to fail.
United do not lose many, but they do not win as many as they should, either. Often they fail to close out games, or concede late goals. Does Mourinho contribute to this, with his constant talk of exhaustion? And does it serve a purpose, considering this is a battle he cannot win?
Uefa dates are in the calendar when the season begins. So is the last day of the domestic campaign. There really isn’t that much wriggle room for a team still involved in Europe. Had United not been eliminated from the FA Cup by Chelsea, they would probably have had to play two midweek matches in the final week of the season, to accommodate the postponed league fixture with Burnley.
Yet, as it is, does Mourinho have a case? His gripe is that his players had nine matches in April. Is that so unusual? Not really. In 15 of the last 20 seasons, United have played nine games in less than 30 days at some stage. Not always this late, when fatigue is more of a factor admittedly, but success breeds a hectic schedule.
In 2000-01, Liverpool did the cup treble under Gerard Houllier – League Cup, FA Cup, Uefa Cup. They fulfilled every game listed when the season began. An entire league programme, plus each round of all three cups. As a result, between March 31 and May 1, Liverpool played 10 games in 32 days – an even busier schedule than United now.
United have also got quite lucky with their journeys: of their nine games in April, five have been at home, another in Manchester, and one in Burnley. Bar trips to Sunderland and Brussels, every match was within 56.37km of Old Trafford.
Liverpool, in 2001, had to travel to Barcelona, Wycombe, Coventry and Ipswich during their 10 in 32 – and, while those matches do not sound the hardest, Coventry and Ipswich were Premier League teams then.
Not that Mourinho is the first United manager to not see the sunny side. Ferguson was never knowingly mistaken for a fortnight’s holiday in Benidorm either; indeed, one of his great feats was to convince players who rarely had anything bar superlatives thrown at them that they were the victims of a sophisticated conspiracy, and everyone was out to do them in.
While journalists debated whether in that day’s story United were magnificent, brilliant or merely fabulous, Ferguson and his players walked around scowling, as if under siege. Perhaps this is Mourinho’s ploy, too – he wishes to create a unifying mentality that pitches United against the world.
If so, however, why does he also turn his scorn on his team? Why did he sneer, once again, at Luke Shaw, whose latest injury may keep him out into next season? Why did he imply that Chris Smalling and Phil Jones are not pushing hard enough to return?
Not every defender is John Terry, demanding to be let out of an ambulance so he could get back to the Millennium Stadium and finish the 2007 League Cup final despite having taken a kick to the head. A mood of “us against them” is a familiar motivational tactic for a coach; “me against us, and them”, is not.
United are far from hated. When genuine tragedy befell them, football rallied and still remembers what the club and their people did to rebuild from one terrible day in 1958. Yet the modern, Premier League, Champions League era United have advantages; and they are many and inescapable.
Whatever team they contrived to field in Vigo on Thursday, it will be the envy of the majority of rivals; just as most managers would cheerfully volunteer to swap their own troubles for Mourinho’s scheduling woes. So can a moaning United manager be taken seriously? Shake your head. It’s time for bed. – Daily Mail