Former United manager on how he has changed and what comes next
EXCLUSIVE Jose Mourinho
With no little intensity, Jose Mourinho is discussing a revelation that has come to him in this, his first major managerial career break in 19 years, and it concerns a section of the sports media upon whom at times he declared war: television pundits.
Mourinho is in Madrid to promote the results service Livescore, and of all the things we discuss – his future, Liverpool, Manchester City, his love of tennis, Alexis Sanchez – it is the punditry point that grips him first.
Outside, the meeting rooms of the La Liga headquarters are buzzing with Spanish reporters – Mourinho is a big name in this city, and they suspect that he might be back working here before long. But Mourinho is talking about what he discovered when he agreed to be a pundit on Sky Sports for the Premier League’s opening weekend.
This is a man who made a habit of calling out pundits, a class of former player whose life he once described as “very good seat, very good money, no pressure, they are always right, they never lose”. Invited into their midst, he discovered something different: that the job was harder than he thought, and that a lot of preparation went into it. “Game starts 5pm, but they are in at 11am,” he says. No one had told him that before. Above all, it made him scrutinise his own loyalties and biases. He could see the conflicted feelings of the former pro trying to tell it straight.
He admired the desire of Graeme Souness and Gary Neville, two pundits with whom he has clashed frequently in the past, to do a good job. He recognised their passion for the game. But it is the psychology of balancing past loyalties and friendships with commenting honestly that interests him most.
Later, alongside his former player Samuel Eto’o, he will take part in a panel discussion for Livescore on “the value of speed and innovation in sport”. Watching
that, you get the impression he could do it in his sleep.
Criticising Chelsea, and their manager Frank Lampard, for the first time? He found that hard.
“The one thing which I really feel is that the pundits try to be professional,” he says. “Not just on their preparation, but on their analysis. Sometimes as a manager, you can feel about a pundit, ‘This guy has an agenda. This guy wants to attack me. This guy wants to protect the other one.’ I don’t think they don’t feel that [instinct]. I think they are professional in every aspect. But what I felt when I was a pundit, they also feel.
“Saying, for example, that I felt Frank should be a little bit more pragmatic in his approach [against Manchester United]. It hurts me. It is difficult to separate the professionalism of their [punditry] work with the human feeling that they have. I cannot blame some guy being pro-liverpool if it is in his blood. I cannot criticise a guy being a little anti-jose if he is not in love with Jose. You cannot separate the pundit from the man.”
Mourinho has not been out of work at this time of the year since before he was appointed to his first job at Benfica in September 2000. He was sacked because of a change of president, and from Leiria and then Porto, he never looked back. He is tanned, and perhaps a little leaner than the harassed figure who departed Manchester United in December. He says he has been travelling, reviewing ideas and doing something he describes as “reformulating my next technical staff ”. “If you ask me, ‘Am I sad?’” he posits, although the question had never occurred to me. “No, not at all. I am fine. I am more than fine and I am using my time well.”
His last reign at Old Trafford fell in its third season and now some of his big United signings are leaving too: Romelu Lukaku sold to Inter Milan and Sanchez loaned to the same club at great cost to United. Lukaku, Mourinho argues, has always scored goals. “For West Bromwich Albion, for Everton, for United,” he says. “In terms of Lukaku, the move looks more like player ambition, player desire to change, than [the notion] he didn’t deliver anything for the club.”
What of Sanchez, an enormous investment who was judged too expensive by City in January of last year? His arrival at Old Trafford was supposed to swing the 2017-2018 title race in United’s favour. Instead, since then City have won two league titles, Mourinho is gone from United and now so too is Sanchez. Mourinho could dodge this question, but instead he has something to say.
“Sanchez … I felt him [to be] not a happy man. And I think in every job you have, when you are not happy it is not so easy to perform at every level.
“And maybe I am wrong. Maybe it was me who was not capable to get into him and to get the best out of him. As a manager, sometimes you have the capacity to get the best out of the players and other times you are not successful in that approach. But the reality is that I always felt [of Sanchez], ‘a sad man’. So probably in Italy he will recover this. I hope he can. I always wish well to every player.”
As for himself, Mourinho knows how football works. Soon the sacking season will be upon us and somewhere the call will go up: get
Jose. “When you are in May, you think: June, football holiday; July, pre-season; August, beginning of the league; September, nobody sacks anybody,” he says. “So then you think, ‘Oh my God – we are going to be waiting for October, November, December.’ In the next two or three months lots of things can happen.”
It may well be Real Madrid, a second coming to the club he left in 2013 to rejoin Chelsea. Or Paris St-germain – somewhere he can add to the 25 major trophies and compete with all the usual old rivals. What, I ask, about that story he had been offered the manager’s job at Guangzhou Evergrande in the Chinese Super League? One imagines that even a wealthy man such as Mourinho could find himself a lot wealthier in China.
He seems glad of the chance to clarify a few points about this, the first being that this offer was not leaked by his camp. “But this is a true story,” he says, “a true story with historical numbers for a football manager.” By that he means the size of the salary. “It would be the record in the history of football managers by far.” But the job was not for you?
“Not for me.”
“For sure, my next job will be a difficult one, because I am very bad at choosing projects,” he says. “I am either bad at choosing projects or the bad projects choose me. But it is always the same. When I go to Madrid, it is because Madrid are in trouble. When I go to United it is because United are in trouble. When I go to Chelsea the first time it is because they haven’t won the league in 50 years. When I go the second time it is because their top team disappeared and they want to be champions with a new team. When I go to Inter it is because they haven’t won the Champions League for 50 years.
“I have never had one of these clubs where it is, ‘Come on, the team is here ready.’ But that is the nature of things. When the teams change coaches in the middle of the season it is for a reason. It is because of bad results.”
We look back at that secondplace finish with United in his last full season, 2017-2018, that he said at the time was one of his greatest achievements. No one took that seriously then, but the 15 months since have warranted a review. United were sixth last season and the same two-horse race between Manchester City and Liverpool for the title appears to be taking shape again this season. What happened to the rest? Why are these two clubs so far ahead now?
“I think the structure of the clubs,” he says. “When you look at City, for example: the owner, Ferran Soriano [chief executive]; Txiki Begiristain [director of football]; Pep Guardiola; Pep’s staff and then the players. This looks like harmony, empathy, chemistry, quality, sharing the same project, sharing the same ideas.
“Liverpool? I also think that Jurgen [Klopp] is in a good position. He is very stable. I think he has control of his ‘areas’. He is supported by people who think the same way, the structure of the club.
“Ok, Pep: fantastic coach. Jurgen: fantastic coach. I think if tomorrow one of them leaves and another top coach comes – of course, has to be top like they are – the team will still be there [at that level]. I think performance is globality. I think basically it is that.”
By “globality” he means everyone allied to the same structure. He does not refer to his time at United specifically, but one does not have to make too much of a leap. How many clubs are there with this elusive globality? “You can count on your fingers the European clubs where you feel that everything is in place,” he says. “I don’t think I am going to get one of these jobs. I think I am going to get one where probably they need my input, they need my experience, they need my knowledge before you build a winning team.”
Mourinho’s summer of discovery has involved plenty of tennis – but not, he says, cricket. He knows the West Indies batsman Chris Gayle through his agent and friend Matthew O’donohoe. “Chris keeps promising me, ‘I will explain cricket to you,’” Mourinho says. “Come on, it is very difficult. I don’t understand it.” Instead, his passion outside football is tennis.
Perhaps he feels there is something he can learn from the individualism of tennis that might be useful with great athletes such as Sanchez, who – for no outward reason – seem to lose that competitive edge. He loves watching tennis, but he says, “My privilege is to be with them, to speak with them, to watch them in training sessions, to speak with the coaches.” He says he recently spent two hours on the phone with the coach of Grigor Dimitrov, the US Open semi-finalist from Bulgaria.
“I think they learn with me. I think they are also curious about the way I speak, the way I do things. I give you an example: the way they recover is completely different in tennis. The way they recover physical and mentally from one game to play a grand slam game the next day. There are many things that I like to speak with them about.”
He is genuine when he says that he admires the independence of the tennis player, who, unlike his or her football counterpart, has to make all the big decisions about appointing – and sacking – coaches, as well as managing their own support staff. “It’s a completely different profile to a footballer, but I like the feeling of the player making a decision about his own future.”
It will be nine months on Monday since he last managed a game, but his time has not been wasted. When the call comes, he plans to be ready.
‘I cannot criticise for being anti-jose if he is not in love with Jose. I cannot separate a pundit from the man’