Mourinho v Guardiola: football’s most toxic rivalry
There is a core belief shared by Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola which helps explain why, as long as the two managers are rivals, they can never be friends.
“When we fight, we want everyone to fight together and when a problem comes up, Jose always puts his face forward,” said a long- term associate of Mourinho when asked to explain the enmity between the two ahead of their meeting in the Manchester derby at 11.30pm tonight ( NZT).
“Jose always wants to feel that behind him, there is also a team,” he added. “When Jose does something, he wears the shirt of the club and he fights for the club. If everyone is not pushing in the right direction, then he is not happy. He has to feel that everyone at the club is working with him.”
The irony is that the same comment could be made of Guardiola, who shares that ‘ all for one’ attitude. And therein lies the driving force of the rivalry, because for all their public enmity, Mourinho and Guardiola are strikingly similar. Both are alpha males, both demand intensity and loyalty from their charges, both work to unbending high standards and both see conspiracy and disloyalty where sometimes they do not exist. Memories are long and so is the sense of being slighted.
Another irony is that Guardiola could have been Mourinho’s protege. Instead, he became the key player in what those associated with Barcelona claim was a painful blow to Mourinho’s pride in 2008, when the Catalans realised that discipline had broken down under coach Frank Rijkaard and that it was time for change.
Mourinho had been sacked by Chelsea and looked an attractive option: charismatic, if confrontational, he exuded authority and had an astonishing record of success. He also desperately wanted the job.
Board members Marc Ingla and Txiki Begiristain — now Manchester City’s director of football — were sent to meet Mourinho in Portugal, where he gave them a detailed PowerPoint presentation of how he would reinvigorate Barcelona, including which players would go, which areas needed strengthening and who would make up his backroom staff. He suggested Guardiola, then coaching Barcelona B, as one of his assistants ( Mourinho likes to have a club’s former player on his staff ). The presentation was, as ever with Mourinho, a formidable and persuasive piece of work and, surely, would seal the deal.
Ingla and Begiristain returned to Spain and it appeared the mood was, indeed, to appoint Mourinho. Then Evarist Murtra, a Barcelona vicepresident, intervened and was backed, crucially, by Johan Cruyff, who had managed the so- called Barcelona ‘ Dream Team’, of which Guardiola had been a part. The pair pointed to Guardiola and the incredible, detailed work he had already done with Barca B and warned against Mourinho. Guardiola got the job. To add further spice to the story, it has also been claimed that Guardiola himself had recommended Mourinho in the first place.
In truth, the pair were never close, although there was always a professional respect. They first met more than 20 years ago when Sir Bobby Robson took his first training session as Barcelona coach. Guardiola was the captain, Mourinho the translator.
The latter shrewdly identified Guardiola, a Cruyff loyalist who grew to admire Robson, as the leader of the Catalan- Spanish faction of the team — someone to stay onside with.
Mourinho left Barcelona in 2000, after four years, to forge his own coaching career, initially at Porto. Wariness between the two developed into a gulf when Guardiola got the job Mourinho coveted at Barcelona and the plaudits started to rain down, and by the fact that they were invariably jousting for the same trophies.
Mourinho’s Inter Milan beat Guardiola’s Barcelona on the way to winning the 2010 Champions League and then Mourinho was appointed Real Madrid coach. While Guardiola usually bested Mourinho in their head- to- head meetings, a major reason behind his decision to quit Barcelona two years later and take a year off was because he was worn down by the feuding.
The story feeds a wider narrative that Guardiola has been the preferred choice of clubs where Mourinho had wanted the job on at least three occasions — four if Manchester City are also included, with Mourinho’s agent Jorge Mendes having attempted to court them on more than once.
That will have hurt Mourinho, for whom any serious rival must — by definition — be an enemy. And it is why, for all the gilded footballing talent on display at Old Trafford tonight, the most compelling battle of all in the 172nd Manchester derby will be fought in the dugouts.