The picture that sums up Mourinho’s cynical season
WE are approaching that time of year when the gentlemen at the Premier League make their initial assessment of the dying football season. As ever, they will wince at the salaries awarded to players, managers, even directors. They will note the insanity of transfer fees and the grotesque payments to agents.
But then they will turn to the good news; to the booming attendances, sponsorships, commercial income and, above and beyond all these, the television contracts which fuel the entire phenomenon. And they will conclude that it all went rather well. This time, their smugness will not seem misplaced. For it was an outstanding season, one of the best in the League’s 22-year history.
The most gifted players made the greatest impact. Luis Suarez lived down his blemished past to win and deserve a cluster of awards, Yaya Touré combined the power of a cruiserweight with the touch of a card sharp, David Silva was beguiling, Aaron Ramsey was a revelation and Steven Gerrard was consistently admirable.
Meanwhile, the youngsters announced themselves with a confident flourish; Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley, Luke Shaw, they all engendered a new and vibrant optimism.Yet the people who did most to lift the spirits were those boldly creative managers who instilled in their players a desire to progress through swift passing and intelligent movement, rejecting the brawny, battering Stone Age methods which have disfigured the English game for so long.
Brendan Rodgers produced a Liverpool side which has contested the title with guile and flair, while Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City have been scarcely less attractive. At Arsenal, Arsene Wenger has remained true to his principles, while Roberto Martinez has fashioned the most pleasing Everton team in years. And perhaps the bravest contribution of all was made by Mauricio Pochettino, whose young and fearless footballers made a visit to Southampton one of the most rewarding experiences the League has to offer.
At which point, you may have spotted a significant omission. So be it.
A single picture seemed to summarise Jose Mourinho’s season. It was taken at last Sunday’s Liverpool-Chelsea game, and it showed Mourinho fending off Steven Gerrard and Jon Flanagan as they tried to retrieve the ball for a throw-in.
The match was just a few minutes old, but already Mourinho was engaged in skulduggery; breaking up the play, wasting time, testing the officials.
Gerrard and Flanagan were perfectly entitled to hunt down the ball, yet the Chelsea manager’s face was a study in haughty disdain. It was a face which asked the terminally arrogant question: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
OF course they knew, just as surely as they knew he was cheating. But such is his self-regard that he feels himself beyond challenge, and particularly when that challenge comes from mere footballers. No matter that one of those footballers is the captain of England.
You may recall his spat with Cristiano Ronaldo, some six or seven years ago, when the former Manchester United player dared to dis- agree with him. He accused Ronaldo of showing him insufficient respect. And he blamed his fellow countryman’s ‘difficult childhood’, with ‘no education’.
No matter that Mourinho comes from a privileged background while Ronaldo was raised in pitiful poverty, no compassion was shown. Alex Ferguson’s reaction was devastatingly appropriate: ‘There are people from very poor backgrounds who have principles, whereas there are others who are educated but have no principles at all.’
The years have not contained Mourinho’s conceit. Just two days ago, following Chelsea’s Champions League semi-final defeat against Atletico Madrid, the gifted young player Eden Hazard told a French television station: ‘Chelsea aren’t set up to play football. Chelsea are set up to counter-attack’.
Mourinho, his ego affronted, reacted with tritely predictable abuse: ‘He’s not the kind of player ready to sacrifice himself 100 per cent for the team and his mates’, he said.
Yet Hazard was making a demonstrably valid point. Where the finest, most enterprising coaches send out teams to win, Mourinho’s sides are designed to avoid defeat. Victory is, therefore, a bonus, the product of opposition error. Rodgers was roundly criticised for his ‘parking the bus’ remark after Liverpool’s defeat last week. He was informed, with many a condescending sneer, that defending is an art which is just as difficult to master as attacking.
YET Rodgers, like Hazard, was right. Efficient defending requires intense concentration, rigorous discipline and adequate courage; excellent qualities which the best players master under the instruction of a diligent coach.
Nobody can deny Mourinho’s diligence, and his teams bear witness to his defensive thoroughness. But attacking football demands more orginality, more enterprise, what an American President used to call: ‘That vision thing’. These are the higher gifts, which only the truly outstanding coaches are capable of nurturing. As a sterile pragmatist, an architect of charmless football teams, Mourinho lacks both the nerve and the imagination to merit the description.
But the Chelsea manager has been a rare discordant presence in an overwhelmingly harmonious period. For it was a season in which many of our most important teams resolved to raise their sights, to forsake cynicism in favour of gleeful liberation, in short, to award the game the respect it deserves.
Those gentlemen at the Premier League deserve their satisfaction. It all went rather well.