Mourinho’s locked in a contest he knows he cannot win
It iS not always helpful to view issues relating to Manchester United through the prism of the Sir alex Ferguson years but occasionally it is hard not to.
Managing people is one area in which Ferguson had few equals and Jose Mourinho is underlining that point right now.
one myth is that Ferguson ruled old trafford largely by fear, that he was as scary, irascible and combative as he would often be on tV or on the touchline. the opposite is true.
Ferguson understood that his everyday demeanour, as well as his public pronouncements, set the tone for life at United, from the top of the club to the bottom. if Ferguson smiled then United smiled back at him.
ask staff at the Carrington training ground for their memories and they will talk not of football and trophies and glory but of Ferguson, white sports socks worn beneath his flip flops, appearing round corridor corners whistling or singing — badly — some old Scottish folk tune.
‘We just the miss the boss,’ said one time-served staffer about a year after Ferguson’s retirement in 2013. ‘not just his football. We just miss him.’ in the dressing room, Ferguson knew how to turn a scene from dark to light, too. he knew when his players had suffered him enough.
once, after a disappointing result at Watford, Ferguson stormed in having had a verbal exchange on the touchline with ryan Giggs, of all people.
after unleashing fiery hell on his players for five minutes, Ferguson stopped in his tracks and turned to Giggs. ‘ and you,’ he said with a smile. ‘ Don’t talk to your grandad like that ever again’.
all this is relevant today because we don’t sense much of that life, colour and spirit coming out of old trafford right now. on the watch of the dark, brooding Mourinho, United’s mood mirrors that of their results and performances. Bleak.
United are always a big draw when they travel away — frankly they are still the biggest — and when they arrive, ears prick up. at Brighton on Sunday, staff at the home club not only saw confusion and uncertainty on the field but picked up on tension in the visiting party. Ferguson used
‘HE’S LIKE A MAN TAKEN HOSTAGE’
to growl, spit and curse on behalf of his club. sometimes it was to close ranks, other times it was to deepen a perceived weakness in an opponent.
Mourinho just looks and sounds genuinely unhappy and it is at this point that we must ask what that is doing to his players.
There is more to management than spreading love and bursting with late summer joie de vivre but it can help. Ferguson could present many faces to the world when need be — and not all were genuine or likeable.
But there was rarely any acting at Carrington, the heart of his fiefdom. That is where he was most at home. Mourinho, meanwhile, was described by one Carrington insider as too often carrying the demeanour of a man taken hostage.
Naturally, we wonder what is causing it. It can’t all be about transfer frustrations. This darkness, this glowering countenance, started long before his executive vice- chairman, ed Woodward, chose not to buy him yet another central defender this summer.
It can’t all be about Paul Pogba, either. He is only one of many, many good players at United, after all.
A personal suspicion — a seed planted as United fell deep into Manchester City’s slipstream last season — is that Mourinho, perhaps for the first time in his managerial career, finds himself locked in a contest that he simply cannot win.
It is OK for Jurgen Klopp to finish fourth in the Premier League with Liverpool. The German views that as progress. It is not OK for Mourinho to finish second at United. That is not progress, not in his mind. Mourinho was born to win and, as such, second is nowhere.
At City something has been built that United and Mourinho are not equipped to tear down. Not now and maybe never on Mourinho’s watch. There is too much to do, too much ground has been lost since Ferguson stepped down, and Mourinho knows it.
so, what is he to do? settle into his new status as one of a bunch of also-rans? Win a domestic cup now and again and lower his window blinds at the Lowry Hotel as the City title parade rumbles past every May? Not a chance.
No, in all likelihood Mourinho will continue to light fires at United until it is time to leave a burning building and start anew somewhere else.
Mourinho always wanted to manage this football club. What he did not bank on was turning up at exactly the wrong time.