Time for Jose to lighten up
NOW HE'S GRUMPY ONE IN THE KNOW, INSIDE THE GAME
HE IS clearly a Marmite manager but there can surely be no disputing that Jose Mourinho ‘used’ to be entertaining.
The Portuguese coach was pure box office but over the last few years he has lost so much of his charisma and sparkle.
Maybe if Mourinho – who is 55 next month – rediscovers a dash of his devilish humour it could help things start to look up for him.
You can only imagine what the pressure of managing the most valuable club in the world is like. But it definitely seems to have become a heavy burden on Mourinho.
It seems ages since he came out with a quote which made you smile at its audacity or its sarcastic humour.
After losing at Bristol City this month in the Carabao Cup, he showed more pace than Marcus Rashford or Anthony Martial to get in and out of the press conference room while only one reporter was there.
Confession time here – despite his obvious faults, during his two spells at Chelsea I often found Mourinho great fun to deal with.
Yes, he could be moody and sullen, but often a cheeky question phrased with a humorous edge could win him round and he’d often talk for more than 30 minutes in the build-up to a match.
Once, a fellow reporter took the mickey out of Mourinho in his match report, digging out the manager for wearing a scarf on a mild day just hours after he had told his men they needed to toughen up. A few days later, after his press conference, he told the reporter to come into his office where he presented him with the expensive, designer scarf.
And of course, there have been all those headline-grabbing quotes, which even his fiercest critics will have gobbled up. There was even a book published soon after his arrival at Chelsea in 2004 called ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Jose Mourinho’. The most famous is, of course: “Please don’t call me arrogant because what I am saying is true. I think I am a special one.”
Sadly, Mourinho – certainly when it comes to his public utterances – doesn’t seem so special any more. He has always found ways to deflect attention away from defeats. Let’s face it, the bust-up at Old Trafford following the humbling loss to Manchester City avoided thousands of column inches being written about the manner of the defeat, but they used to be laced with witty gems. Not any more. Playing amateur psychologist here, you can’t help but think that the long illness and death, in June, of his beloved father Felix affected Mourinho terribly.
When Chelsea were struggling prior to his sacking in December 2015 it was at a time he was regularly flying back to see his dad.
So come on Jose, make it your New Year’s resolution to lighten up a bit and start dishing out some of those lines you must still have floating around in your head.
It will help out us hacks a lot and, who knows, it might even do you and your team a power of good too.