Mourinho’s real challenge is to build a legacy at Chelsea
IT IS impressive that Chelsea won the title with three games to spare and there is no doubt they have been the strongest side in the Premier League by some distance this season. But what next for Jose Mourinho?
He has the same number of English League titles as Bill Shankly and Arsene Wenger now but we won’t think of him as the kind of manager who builds a club until he stays in one place for more than five seasons. It would be fair to say that the Chelsea team he built first time round continued to win trophies long after he had gone. Yet, at Chelsea the test is whether he can bring through young players and leave his mark on the club in the way that Sir Alex Ferguson did at Manchester United. We know Mourinho can win titles — he is brilliant at it — but how long can he do it at one club?
A lot of that depends on the way that he wants to play. The way a top team develops means once you have won the title, the natural step is to try to win
He needs to take on the best and the best look a long way ahead of the top English clubs
the Champions League. I believe that next season the Champions League will be Chelsea’s absolute priority under Mourinho. To do it, he needs to take on the best — and the best look a long way ahead of the top English clubs.
I was in Turin for the first leg of Juventus v Real Madrid and I watched Barcelona put three past Bayern Munich on Wednesday night. All four of those sides are much better teams than any cu r re nt side i n Engl a nd, Chel se a included. We know that Mourinho has in the past proved capable of beating more expansive teams by sitting deep and hitting them on the counter-attack. He did it very well when Inter Milan won the Champions League in 2010, but it is a difficult tactic to make work year after year.
Against Paris St Germain he tried something similar and was eliminated on away goals, playing most of the second leg at home against 10 men. Like I said, it is risky to be as conservative as Chelsea were that night. Then PSG were blown away by Barcelona in the next round, so that would have told Chelsea just how far off the pace they are when it comes to Europe’s elite.
It boils down to how Mourinho wants to approach winning the Champions League. No top manager has one set way of playing yet, as things stand, there does not seem any way that any of the English sides could go head-to-head with the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or even Juventus and dominate the game in the traditional sense. Then you ask yourself what kind of football does Roman Abramovich want? All we heard last time Mourinho was at the club was that the owner wanted his team to play like Barcelona.
Winning the league for the third time in his second spell at the club was a great achievementnt for Mourinho. Now he will be lookingooking at the best sides in Europerope and wonder-wondering how he beatsbeats them. And that will be a lot harder.