In fact, he is very much representative of what football is at present; a theatrical, results driven business. Where Mourinho is concerned, football itself fades into an easily ignored backdrop: Victor Valdes completed more passes than any outfield Inter player, Barcelona ended up with 555 passes compared to Inter’s 67 and enjoyed 86% possession…vitriol and endless statistics have been conflated, corroborated and spewed yet the only stat that matters is the number 3. This is the number of trophies Mourinho’s Inter team finished 2009-2010 with.
Any club Mourinho has managed has had a very simple aim: win. Just win. The directive contained nothing on beauty, nothing on the aesthetic representation of a higher ideological belief, nothing on art, or integrity, or anything except the endgame itself. Winning is a finality that does not discriminate against form. And it is something he has, not just a habit of doing, but a compulsion. Domestic titles in three countries (champion of Portugal twice, champion of England twice, champion of Italy twice and this is all discounting the ‘minor’ cups), a UEFA Cup victory, and two Champions League successes – with different teams – all within an eight year period. It is absolutely ridiculous. Mourinho cannot be ascribed the mantle of ‘anti-football’ when it is clear he represents the most marketable, most sought after, and most valued asset in the professional game: a veritable guarantee for success.
What Mourinho is, before every derogatory epithet the press and people can affix to his name, is a great tactical manager. To think otherwise, given his repeated achievements, is honestly baffling. If it were really that easy then why haven’t more attempted to even vaguely replicate? ‘His teams are all worth hundreds of millions of pounds’ is the most common argument. Porto weren’t. His Chelsea team remained largely unchanged but consecutive years followed without a Premier League crown. At Inter this year six of the starting eleven (Lucio, Motta, Sneijder, Pandev, Eto’o, Milito) are in their debut season, meaning he bought them. This year’s team is a Mourinho team; last year’s was the one he inherited. To introduce six new players into the team and create immediate success is indicative of his greatest talent that perhaps isn’t as measurable as tactics, money spent, and trophies won: individual player management.
The bond he creates with his players is probably rooted in the simplest of psychoanalytical theories: create a common enemy and the followers forego their differences, focus more willingly, band together and are thus galvanised. The siege mentality he creates whereby it is his men who are the universally persecuted is transfixing. More so than any other manager he has a natural ability to garner absolute obedience – even more, it is impassioned acquiescence. And this is where I think maybe the bravado, the ego, and the function of his personal theatrics is most overlooked.
At Chelsea he was the self proclaimed Special One. At Inter, in the Bernabeu, the Sky cameras panned to his solitary figure doing a lap of honour while the players celebrated with the trophy; we are all so enamoured and brimming with opprobrium at the man that we are at the whims of his greatest deceit. He leaves himself as the sole proprietor of his own success and failure – the team is not to blame. At Chelsea he intentionally magnified the pressure on his own reputation and the function was to detract from the team (arrogant, no doubt, but with a degree of foresight and mediation). It’s probably why his players love him so much.
And now, with every conquest and every achievement he is adding to that first proclamation of being the Special One. He has made himself the entertainment, the orchestrator and – if he fails – the culprit. That second leg at Barcelona, the only place that derides his reputation with superciliousness, was probably his greatest achievement: Mourinho defeated Barcelona, not Inter. Finger aloft, his celebration positively screamed I am the sole reason for your demise and soldered the point home to every Catalan fan who pejoratively tagged him as ‘the translator’.
All of this I can concede without ever liking the football his teams play. I don’t have to like what he stands for but cannot be blinkered against what he has achieved. Johan Cruyff perfectly encapsulates the differing ideology at work in the game at present – something which is more an indictment on football at present and its directives than it is on Mourinho as a manager:
“It’s better to lose with your own vision than win with someone else’s.”
The moment teams start believing this is the moment Mourinho will be less the spectacle and football, as an aesthetic and as an art, returns to being the means and the ends.
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