What are they going to say about him? That he was a sort man? That he was a smart man? That he had plans? That he sneakily jabbed an opposition coach within the eye throughout an unseemly touchline melee (that nobody needs to see, but in addition actually, actually needs to see)?
The faint whisper this week that José Mourinho could also be a step nearer to managing Paris Saint-Germain has already impressed a wildly overblown response throughout the numerous various platforms of the overblown soccer response business.
Mourinho was fast to disclaim there was contact with PSG, on the identical time trying delighted simply to be again in this sort of José-centred dialog. But it surely isn’t arduous to see why a bit of standard-issue chatter ought to have brought on such pleasure.
As a result of it takes an act of will to do not forget that this hasn’t truly occurred but, that European soccer’s gaudiest empire of mud hasn’t already landed on Mourinho as an answer to its personal fundamental lack of coronary heart, function, methodology, traction. It seems like a weird cultural oversight, like Joni Mitchell not acting at Woodstock however the evil model.
Primarily José in Paris is only a mouthwatering prospect, from the essential comedy of Mourinho and Neymar, collectively eventually, misplaced in hallucinogenic incomprehension to Mourinho striding across the out-grounds of Troyes and Ajaccio like an indignant fallen earl, to the terrifying truths you’ll be able to already hear him spitting into the closest TV lens when he’s lastly sacked.
Who wouldn’t wish to see this at PSG in spite of everything these doomed experiments with pretending to be good, or critical, or excited by constructing one thing? Right here now we have an establishment taking a final lingering look within the mirror, Joker make-up smeared, and simply giving in. That is who we’re. Rent the darkish lord. Voldemort is lastly in command of the Dying Star.
In actuality it might, in fact, be a horrible thought. Mourinho could also be a really well-known coach, however he hasn’t executed something of actual notice since 2017. His profession arc exhibits very clearly that his personal reductive fashion, all the time making an attempt to win by the ultimate scrape of the ultimate sharpened fingernail, is poorly suited to this sort of overlord employer.
Certainly it’s the tragedy of Mourinho’s profession to have gotten so good so shortly that he discovered himself unable to handle on the type of membership – smaller, punchier, extra biddable – the place he had the most effective probability of doing his finest work, a super-coach model of the Peter Precept.
It was nonetheless an exciting spectacle watching Mourinho’s Roma tackle Bayer Leverkusen within the Europa League semi-finals on Thursday. Aged 60 now, he has gone thrillingly white and wild, looming on the touchline like a charismatic shark boat captain.
There’s a acquainted fury to this Roma staff. At one level Tammy Abraham was berated by his teammates for failing to go down and barter a reserving from a foul. Even the sport’s solely purpose was an extended ball flicked on, the identical previous spirit of ready, spoiling, then going straight for the eyes, the throat, the place of most alternative.
And at this level the broader trajectory of Mourinho’s profession nonetheless feels a bit of underexamined. His fall from the elite rank is usually taken as proof of a person out of time, overly reliant on his inventory of private magnetism, pragmatism masked with celeb gloss.
The paradox right here is that Mourinho’s biggest achievements are genuine works of arduous, detailed teaching. To not point out a bit of neglected now. By any goal customary the Champions League wins with Porto and Internazionale are nonetheless the best particular person teaching feats on the high finish of European membership soccer within the final 25 years.
There have been solely two shock, small-budget champions of Europe in that interval. Each had been managed by Mourinho. Some have steered Porto 2004 was a bit of random and fortunate. However the info say in any other case as a result of no one has executed it since apart from Mourinho himself, six years later with an Inter staff of restricted assets and a method that was, for those who don’t see this sport as a type of online game, totally gripping.
His biggest end result continues to be the 1-0 semi-final defeat on the Camp Nou in April 2010 that meant Inter eradicated Barcelona. Inter had one shot to Barça’s 20. Mourinho set his staff up in a 4-5-0 after the sending-off of Thiago Motta (additionally now on PSG’s to-do listing) and watched his gamers intentionally kick the ball away for an hour as a result of possession solely distracts from the actual enterprise of disrupting one of many nice possession machines.
Inter accomplished 74 passes to Barcelona’s 691, the best, most engrossing textural distinction at this degree within the fashionable period. But it surely was a private excessive from which Mourinho, and certainly the sport itself, has receded ever since.
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This stuff was basically unsustainable as a product, or as something superstar players are willing to do. Again, the paradox of Mourinho. A manager who seemed so modern in his early years, all extreme attention to detail and handsome alpha warlord vibes, has turned out to be the last of a line, last of the big personality types, the Easter Island Heads.
It is tempting to suggest it was the Premier League that spoiled Mourinho by playing to his vices, lingering on his cartoonish persona as opposed to forcing any real tactical development. Real Madrid was also a doomed alliance. Mourinho played his part in the greatest two-hander in modern club football, the Pep-Messi, José-CR7 duopoly, which was operatic and beautiful, but demanded also that he fully assume the role of the imperial bad guy.
There are two things worth saying about that. First the idea Mourinho is somehow the enemy of football, as declaimed by the likes of Johan Cruyff – look at us, here, the light side of the force – seems increasingly silly given where the game is now.
![José Mourinho urges his Roma team on against Bayer Leverkusen](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b90a2352428716c96a05204aaf77cb9fcf944497/0_0_4252_2835/master/4252.jpg?width=445&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none)
Football has many actual enemies, mainly asset strippers, hedge funds and PR-hungry nation states. Mourinho at least made you want to watch this thing, to lose yourself in its feverish details. Personally I really like his style, the fact it doesn’t fit into easy highlights clips, that it demands work and patience and gruelling internal engagement, the polar opposite of the packaging of sport as a homogenised fun-product.
To win a game against peak, grizzled Mourinho validates and ennobles every other way of playing. The best of that great Barcelona team, its light and beauty, was framed by the contrast.
From here Mourinho can enjoy his own late bloom. Perhaps he can take Roma to another final, can make the pitch for a trip back into the inner circle. But it seems likely now that what he did in those years will not be repeated, not to the same extent.
The gap at the top has got wider. This process is only going one way. Those twin Mourinho highs are still a gold standard in modern-day club football – not to mention surprisingly precious, a mark, for all his own stasis, of just how much this game has changed around him.