Inside story of how new regime were in position to grab power
Sam Wallace reveals the detailed plans Mourinho made to ensure he was ready to take Spurs job
Those trips to Lille were, Jose Mourinho liked to joke, a chance for him to watch a match at a club where no one would ever assume that he was sizing up the manager’s job. He could go to the game, have a chat with his old friend Luis Campos, the sporting director, and there was no danger of anyone ever making the assumption that he was angling for a job in Ligue 1.
Although, he was up to something. Mourinho was in Lille in February to watch a fixture against Montpellier and then again last month to meet the Lille coaches he had told over the course of the year would be part of his inner circle at whatever club he was appointed at next.
The first-team coach Joao Sacramento, a young Portuguese former analyst who is trilingual, was the obvious Mourinho protege and in search of a fresh face and fresh ideas the old trophy-hunter liked what he saw.
Mourinho’s attitude towards unemployment has not changed since his first sacking back in 2000 when he fell on the wrong side of a Benfica presidential election.
He likes to be ready for whatever is coming and in this case it meant
There can be only days to adapt before the first match comes around
He and his team have been studying players from afar for some time
assembling a new group of coaches, scouts and an analyst who could hit the ground running at a new club, when a manager can have just days to adapt before the first game comes around.
As well as Sacramento, he asked Campos if he could take Lille’s goalkeeper coach Nuno Santos, a 46-year-old former keeper who played all over Europe and North America. It helps that Santos comes from Mourinho’s home town of Setubal.
The first training session for the squad was scheduled to begin around 3pm at Spurs’ training ground off the M25 near Enfield yesterday and when this moment came at last, at whatever club it turned out to be, Mourinho wanted everyone in place and ready.
Sacramento has worked in Britain before, albeit at an entry level, as a student with the Welsh Football Association and at Cardiff City’s academy.
He is a graduate of the University of Glamorgan’s football coaching master’s degree and after that his career moved on rapidly. First, in the analysis department at Monaco, and then at Lille where he graduated to the first-team staff.
The steep trajectory of Sacramento’s progress suggests the same profile of assistant with which Mourinho has always surrounded himself, from Andre Villas-boas, whom he brought to Chelsea as a scout in 2004, to Rui Faria his erstwhile long-serving second-in-command.
Mourinho’s instincts told him that the call would come soon. When he spoke to The Telegraph in September, his analysis of the general cycles of managerial movement were explained thus: “September, nobody sacks anybody. So then you think: ‘we are going to be waiting for October, November, December’. In the next two or three months lots of things can happen.”
Mourinho has been preparing for the moment, and it happened rapidly as the international week came to a close. The
Spurs chairman
Daniel Levy had established a shortlist of managers he wanted to replace Mauricio Pochettino, with whom his relationship had broken down completely from their days on adventure trips to Argentina white-water rafting and wine tasting. Through contacts such as the agent Pini Zahavi, Levy will have been well aware of Mourinho’s interest in the Spurs job, and his salary demands. The pieces were in place – and it was up to Levy to make his choice. Carlo Ancelotti was considered but his compensation fee from Napoli judged prohibitive.
With Pochettino’s departure announced around 7.30pm on Tuesday night, Levy could turn his attentions to the successor. Negotiations with Mourinho’s representatives began around 10.30pm and were concluded in time for Mourinho to sign provisional documents when he woke early the following morning. By 6.30am he was in a car from his home in Chelsea and on his way to his new club’s training ground. He met Levy and had breakfast with senior management figures at the club. Then he moved into his new office and went to work. Although Levy is portrayed at various times as a dictator – and it is certainly him who makes the big calls – there are other key staff at the club who play a major role. The chief scout, Steve Hitchen, organises the recruitment, with all negotiations for agreed targets overseen by Levy. The Spurs chairman also relies on director of football operations Rebecca Caplehorn, who works in player and staff recruitment and is also responsible for infrastructure. Mourinho had turned down offers from the China Super League club Guangzhou Evergrande – a “historic” salary he said at time – and the China national team. There have been inquiries from AC Milan, the Ligue 1 club Nice and Borussia Dortmund. None of them appealed more than a powerful club in the city he has made his home, even when he was manager of Manchester United. He sees a great deal of value in the Spurs squad, and in Harry Kane in particular believes there is a goalscorer who is among the best in the world. In his previous jobs in England at Chelsea, twice, and United, there was no striker of that status when Mourinho arrived, at the age Kane is now – just 26.
Mourinho has been to the new Spurs stadium to see a game just once before, the defeat by Newcastle United in August which he watched from the hospitality box that is leased by the football agency Base Soccer to entertain clients and staff. The immaculate new training ground he has heard all about. But, as ever, it is the players he is most interested in.
He and his team of coaches and analysts have been studying them from afar for some time and they will have gleaned as much as they can from the footage – who has been struggling and where the weaknesses have been.
Mourinho has brought with him an analyst, a fitness coach and a scout from his days at United, a total staff of five with the Lille contingent. The numbers for the first training session were being planned as the Spurs players arrived yesterday afternoon, and Mourinho finally got to see the squad close up. As they might already have guessed, their new manager has been preparing for this day for a very long time.