Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner Read online

  ‘One of the most insightful and respected journalists working in the game … a compelling, believable profile’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘This is a special book by a special writer’

  FourFourTwo

  ‘One of the UK’s leading football writers … Barclay is always worth reading’

  Observer Sport Monthly

  ‘An illuminating, thought-provoking and highly entertaining book by one of Britain’s sharpest and most erudite football writers’

  World Soccer

  ‘A fine biography’

  New Statesman

  ‘A rounded and entirely fair portrait, written with a good deal of wit and insight’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Barclay resists producing a straightforward biographical account of Mourinho’s inimitable rise … he instead builds up an informal picture of the man via an unusual cast of faithful witnesses. It is this determination to search out the sometimes less obvious characters which makes this narrative so compelling. Barclay offers a detailed and contemplative study … a refreshing change’

  Scotsman

  ‘It puts flesh on the headlines, usually with a well-informed phrase’

  Independent

  MOURINHO

  Further Anatomy of a Winner

  PATRICK BARCLAY

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  Following Ferguson

  Mayhem in Madrid

  Mourinho in, Valdano out

  PART TWO

  Welcome to England

  He does what it says on the tin

  Blippin’ marvellous

  The enemy of football

  PART THREE

  The formative years

  Born into football

  ‘Hello, Mister. I’m José Mourinho’

  A little bit of arrogance

  Benfica’s loss is Porto’s gain

  PART FOUR

  José who?

  The three hats

  Selection

  Coaching

  Management

  Mind games: The fourth hat?

  PART FIVE

  Behind the mask

  Humourless? You’re having a laugh

  Different class

  Whatever next?

  The mixture as before

  PART SIX

  From infighting to ecstasy

  A Bridge too far

  Summer of discontent

  Thumbs down from Terry

  First Tottenham, then England

  Mark: my words

  Champions of Europe

  The rebuilding job

  Vieira: the value of trust

  England, his England

  Wesley, you look tired

  One in the eye for Barca

  Index

  Illustrations

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  It said much for José Mourinho that no one with whom I spoke in connection with the original version of this book, published in 2005, or its successors – from such giants of the football world as Sir Bobby Robson, Louis van Gaal and Patrick Vieira to Andre Chin, whom Mourinho once taught at a school in Setúbal – had a bad word to say about him. Presumably, I wrote in 2005, he’d had all his enemies shot.

  To be serious: the man from Chelsea Football Club who told me Mourinho ‘doesn’t like people writing books about him without his permission’ could have put his mind at rest. This was always going to be a legitimate study of a football coach and I was, and remain, deeply grateful to those important figures in the game who, understanding its purpose, gave their time and insight so generously. The late and greatly lamented Sir Bobby apart, they included Van Gaal, Gérard Houllier, David Moyes and the infectiously enthusiastic, profoundly influential Andy Roxburgh. Those who helped to bring the project up to date with stories of Milan and Madrid included Patrick Vieira and Mark Halsey, the referee who became Mourinho’s friend.

  It was a joy to obtain the thoughts of Desmond Morris and to learn from my friend Ian Ross that even a cynical old bastard can succumb to Mourinho’s charm (as I was to do upon meeting him properly for the first time in Italy in 2009, when I offered him a copy of the original book in its Portuguese edition and he said he’d already bought it). Background material came from José Mourinho: Made in Portugal (Dewi Lewis Media, 2004). Perspective was supplied by Frank Clark and Peter Robinson, memories by Mick Martin, Ross Mathie, Tosh McKinlay and Gary Bollan. Thanks are also due to Andre Chin, Ian Aitken and to other people who spoke confidentially; to Paulo Anunciacao and Christina Lamb; to David Luxton of David Luxton Associates, who guided me towards the idea, and Rebecca Winfield; to Alan Samson, Paul Murphy, Ian Preece, Ian Marshall and Mark Rusher for their editorial sensitivity; to James Royce for his researching and interviewing skills; to Lauren Clark for her patience and advice; and (by no means least) to the girl with whom I share those little notebooks that mean so much.

  While writing the original Anatomy of a Winner, I found myself warming, like so many others, to the man, while developing a distaste for some of his ways of managing football. That the dark side is still with us was emphasised by his rant after the first leg of Real Madrid’s Champions League semi-final against Barcelona in the spring of 2011 and the poke in the eye of Tito Vilanova, then assistant to Pep Guardiola, as the great rivals clashed again later in the year. Yet, when people still ask if Mourinho collaborated on the book, I suppose they are wondering what he is like at close quarters, and the answer tends to surprise them. Extremely considerate, I have found. Engaging, genial, often amusing. His assistance was never sought with the book, though. Not at any stage. Not even with this most recent edition. There were two reasons. Mainly that the publishers wanted my hands to continue to be free to type as they chose. But also I wanted to keep all the money.

  Patrick Barclay

  July 2012

  PART ONE

  Following Ferguson

  Mayhem in Madrid

  Of all the candidates named as possible successors to Sir Alex Ferguson as manager of Manchester United, only one would be utterly undaunted by the job. At least it is difficult to think of anyone other than José Mourinho to whom a sudden and conceivably permanent grinding to a halt of the Old Trafford trophy machine would involve no fear of personal failure. Mourinho has attained middle age – he will be fifty towards the end of January 2013 – with nothing to prove, even to himself, which is more than could have been said of Ferguson when in his own late forties, several cold winter months of which were spent wondering if a supporter’s banner telling him it was time to go back to Scotland should be heeded.

  Ferguson endured much self-doubt during that winter of 1989–90, before it gave way to the spring of his first trophy in England, the FA Cup. He questioned his methods of coaching and management and entertained the possibility that he might be yet another Scot who could not live with the hotter competition south of the border. Mourinho, by contrast, breezed into England in 2004 as if he owned the place, proclaiming himself ‘special’ and wasting no time in proving it with two consecutive championships, a feat he had already performed in Portugal and was to repeat in Italy. He also became a European champion in Portugal and Italy. And when, having moved to Spain, he could not beat Barcelona either in La Liga or the Champions League, he gave the impression of believing that it was not the fault of either himself or his team: that sinister forces had been conspiring against his Real Madrid regime.

  Presumably those forces were to relent during his second season at the Bernabéu. Or p
erhaps they were overcome. At any rate, in 2012 Mourinho’s Real added the Spanish crown to his list of conquests, ending the three-year reign of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, all but clinching the title with a 2–1 victory secured by Cristiano Ronaldo at the home of the Catalans on 21 April. Hopes that their majestic advance would proceed to the Champions League final were dashed four days later when they went out on penalties to Bayern Munich after a late equaliser by Mourinho’s former player Arjen Robben. Meanwhile the misery of Barcelona continued as they were ejected, even more surprisingly, by Chelsea, who went on to beat Bayern in the final on penalties despite the German club’s home advantage in the Allianz Arena, Mourinho’s erstwhile club achieving, under the caretaker managership of Roberto Di Matteo, what the Special One could never quite deliver to Roman Abramovich. It still seemed only a matter of time, however, before Mourinho was a European champion again.

  He did it with Porto in 2004 and, upon steering Internazionale to the title in 2010, went to Madrid on a hat-trick. Will he, there, become the first manager to win the Champions League or its equivalent with a third club? As he has said, it is less predictable than his success in winning national leagues: the Portuguese twice, the English twice, the Italian twice (all consecutively) and now the Spanish, for removal from the Champions League can be a matter of one cruel bounce or a linesman’s flag erroneously raised (or both, as in the case of Manchester United versus Porto in 2004). But somehow it appears destined.

  Mourinho, if he wishes, has peak years aplenty to utilise and the English are almost universally delighted by his periodic proclamations that that he intends to spend several of them in the footballing country he sometimes calls his own (while also reasserting, from time to time, a fondness for the notion of a career-culminating stint in charge of Portugal’s national team). In the autumn of 2011, Mourinho was interviewed by Sebastian Coe, the Chelsea-supporting dynamo of London’s Olympic Games, for the Today programme on BBC Radio Four, of which Lord Coe was ‘guest editor’ for the day. That he would return to work in England was taken for granted. The Real Madrid project would delay it, Mourinho estimated, for two years.

  In late January, there was intense speculation that the move would be hastened; he had been upset by unusual friction with players, namely the Spanish trio of Iker Casillas, the national and club captain, Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos, and what he perceived as the undue influence of journalists on day-to-day life at the club’s training ground. In February, he visited London and bought a house, along with a box of doughnuts with which he was photographed leaving the Harrods department store. The frisson the house purchase caused was heightened by the concurrent difficulties at Chelsea, where André Villas-Boas, once a valued assistant to Mourinho, was about to lose his job after mere months. In the event, Di Matteo filled the manager’s role to such effect, placating concerned senior players such as Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba until the season reached its extraordinary climax in Munich, that Abramovich confirmed him in it, albeit after a delay that suggested other irons had been in the fire.

  There would have been at least one conversation with Mourinho, and a theory arose that a return to Stamford Bridge might suit him in that he could park himself there for a couple of years – safe, after what happened to him at Chelsea before, from accusations of cynicism – while awaiting the job he had always coveted at Old Trafford. This proved unfounded. Towards the end of May, once the Liga celebrations had died down, he signed a new four-year contract at the Bernabéu. Anyone imagining that he had thereby given up on the idea of Manchester United – or even come to believe that their manager had attained a state of professional immortality – had only to listen to this extract from a speech Mourinho gave at a conference in Ankara, Turkey, four days later: ‘I have signed until 2016, but at a club like Real Madrid, if you lose two consecutive games, they can cancel your contract.’ He also referred to the education of his elder child, his daughter Matilde. The assumption has always been that she and her brother José Mario would attend university in England. Several distinguished institutions are accessible from Manchester.

  Those who must decide whom United should call to replace Ferguson will consider all aspects of Mourinho’s character along with his record and long-term interest in the post so firmly held by his friend and senior citizen, to whom he has been known to refer to as ‘Boss’. The unlikelihood of his even acknowledging, let alone buckling under, the pressure of trying to maintain an unprecedented level of success achieved by a single manager in the English game would be a big plus for David Gill, the United chief executive, and any others involved in the decision to consider. The controversy Mourinho would be sure to attract, the headlines he would draw away from those who wore the red shirt, would be the minus quantity. For, although Ferguson has been an increasingly dominant and often fiery figure in the English game, requiring a firmer hand than the Football Association could ever employ, even his professional paranoia has tended to fall short of the quote delivered by Mourinho after Real Madrid had been beaten 2–0 at home by Barcelona in the acrid first leg of the 2011 Champions League semifinal. During this match Pepe, the Real player whose principal purpose of the night had been to break the lines of midfield communication between Xavi and Lionel Messi, and then Mourinho himself had been expelled by the German referee, Wolfgang Stark and Mourinho said:

  ‘I didn’t say anything to the referee. I simply laughed and showed my thumbs up. That was it. If I say to him and UEFA what I think, my career ends today. I can’t say what I feel. I only leave one question. Why? Why? Why Ovrebo, Busacca, De Bleeckere, Frisk, Stark? Why to all these people?’

  They were, of course, all referees whose decisions were deemed by Mourinho to have been helpful to Barcelona in prominent Champions League matches. To take various cases: Anders Frisk showed Didier Drogba a second yellow card at Camp Nou in 2005 (and was falsely accused of inappropriate behaviour by Mourinho, whom UEFA branded an ‘enemy of football’ and suspended from Chelsea’s next two matches); Tom Henning Ovrebo denied Chelsea, now managed by Guus Hiddink, a possible three penalties in 2009 (and incorrectly sent off Barcelona’s Eric Abidal); Massimo Busacca showed Arsenal’s Robin van Persie a second yellow in 2011 for shooting after the whistle had blown; and, in the match that had just finished at the Bernabéu, Pepe had seen a straight red for a high challenge on Dani Alves. When Mourinho added that ‘every semi-final always brings the same’, he inevitably drew Frank de Bleeckere into the argument, for a year earlier the Belgian official had sent off Thiago Motta, of Mourinho’s Inter, at Camp Nou (for a pushing offence that, while not as serious as Sergio Busquets had tried to make it look, followed another for which Motta had already been cautioned).

  That Mourinho’s theory was riddled with flaws was hardly the point, however. It was that he accused Barcelona of benefiting from a system in which UEFA and referees colluded to help them, in other words that the game was bent in favour of just one club. And he could hardly have been more emphatic. ‘I won two Champions Leagues [with Porto in 2004 and Inter in 2010] with hard work, with sweat, with pride,’ he said. ‘I would have been embarrassed … ashamed to win the title [as he implied Barcelona had done in 2009] because it was won with the scandal of Stamford Bridge. This will be won with the scandal of the Bernabéu. Where does all this power come from? If Barcelona are honest, they know this is happening. Sometimes I feel disgusted living in this world and earning my living in this world. It is clear that against Barcelona you have no chance. I don’t understand why. I don’t know if it’s the publicity of Unicef [whose name was on the Catalan club’s shirt], I don’t know if it’s the friendship of Villar [Angel Maria Villar, the Spanish football federation president] at UEFA, where he is vice-president. I don’t know if it’s because they are very nice, but they have this power and the rest of us have no chance.’

  When this was promptly put to Pep Guardiola, the Barcelona manager had only to respond: ‘I don’t have an opinion on it.’ He knew he had won. Or that Mourinho had lost a figh
t of his own making.

  He had begun it in the build-up to the match, the fourth in a series of five Clasicos between Spain’s great rivals, bringing up a remark by Guardiola after the previous one in which a sharp-eyed linesman had denied Barcelona a goal by a margin of ‘centimetres’ and making fun of it. He said: ‘Up to now we have two types of coaches. A very small group who don’t talk about referees and a very large group, in which I am included, who criticise referees when they make big mistakes. Now, with Pep’s statement, we come to a new era with a third group, a one-person group, who criticise good decisions … I have never seen this before.’ He then began to spell out how Barcelona were favoured by decisions and made his first reference to ‘the scandal of Stamford Bridge’. And on this occasion Guardiola had been unable to contain himself.

  He and Mourinho went back a long way: to 1996, when Guardiola was a star player with Barcelona, his prominence in the firmament assured by a leading role in the acquisition of the club’s first European title at Wembley in 1992, and Mourinho a relatively junior assistant to Sir Bobby Robson, who later said Mourinho had cultivated the popular Pep because he was clearly an influential figure around the club. They had gone on to become arguably the most successful coaches in the European game and therefore intense adversaries, even before Mourinho arrived at Real in the summer of 2010 and the Clasico quintet began a few months later with Real’s five-goal slaughter at Camp Nou. Guardiola clearly felt he and his club deserved more respect than Mourinho was according on the eve of the semi-final and lost composure to the extent that he swore on television, saying: ‘Normally he speaks in general terms about a club, a team. This time he said “Pep”. So I say “Hey, José”, in this room [the press conference], Mourinho is the chief, the fucking boss. I don’t have to compete with him in here. I try not to play the game off the pitch. He is much better than me off the pitch. I represent an institution that believes this is not the best way to do things. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Tomorrow night there is a football match and I will see him at 8.45.’