When Kane scored Spurs joined in the joy, but Mourinho’s a different beast
IT WAS Carlo Ancelotti who once said it was not his job to motivate players but to make sure he doesn’t demotivate them. In his dealings with Paul Pogba, it could be said that Jose Mourinho is treading the line between those two concepts pretty dangerously indeed.
Only a week or so into Manchester United’s pre-season and the start of year three under Mourinho already has a pretty familiar smell about it. Already everything looks and sounds a little bit like hard work in terms of his relationship with Pogba. It would appear that Mourinho is not ready to deviate from a course of tough love firmly established last season.
Pogba will return to his club later this month on the back of a very good World Cup with France. In an interview with ESPN in the USA, though, Mourinho seemed less inclined to reinforce what appears to be rediscovered confidence, choosing instead to hint that Pogba will still have it all to prove on his return to Old Trafford.
This points straight to the heart of one of the idiosyncrasies of Mourinho’s management, namely that if something good happens somewhere other than on his own watch then it doesn’t really matter or count.
Mourinho is not alone in this. Sir Alex Ferguson was the same. Pep Guardiola has a little bit of it about him too.
But the United manager’s stance is extreme, especially compared to Mauricio Pochettino’s reaction to Harry Kane’s exploits in Russia for England.
‘My boy! He scored twice, I’m so proud. Unbelievable,’ the Argentine said after Kane’s late winner against Tunisia.
‘I watched in my hotel room and when he scored in the last minute I was running around like an England fan.’
Pochettino sees Kane’s success with England as beneficial for Tottenham. Conversely, Mourinho sounded begrudging when he spoke of Pogba this week and that is the difference. Certainly a player like Kane is easier to handle. He is a more straightforward character.
Maybe Mourinho is worried Pogba will return to Manchester and fall into the same traps of self-promotion and self-regard that he fears handicapped the player last season. He is his manager, after all.
But Mourinho knows better than most that in modern football perception is everything and if Pogba comes back from his summer break feeling that his club manager has deliberately passed up an opportunity to publicly endorse his efforts and abilities, then who can really blame him?
The two men have spoken rather too much about each other since last season ended in that FA Cup final defeat by Chelsea. Pogba, for example, prefaced the World Cup by saying he would return to United with ‘work to be done’.
What has happened since is that the 25-year- old midfielder has reminded us what a fine player he can be.
That he has done it under the supervision of another coach, Didier Deschamps, should not really matter to Mourinho . . . but maybe it does.