Who should be the new manager?

[buster. 5,658]

17 minutes ago, Uilleam said:

I'm not so sure: after all we have had no less than Zwei Fliegende Holländer...

The red numbers that have accompanied us from that moment led to "our Gotterdammerung" and they have persisted ever since.

 

We need to rid ourselves of the red before we can look forward with any confidence.

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by buster.

[Uilleam 6,470]

 

So, Mourinho then. 

Jonathan Northcroft, in the ST, explains why not.  Or maybe why. 

I incline to the former, me. 

 

JONATHAN NORTHCROFT

The decline of José Mourinho: how Special One became ‘ordinary’

Twenty years ago Chelsea won an extraordinary title in his first season, but it is now ten years since his last league triumph. What went wrong — and is Portugal job next step?

Mourinho’s phenomenal early impact at Chelsea is a distant memory now he is largely offstage at Fenerbahce

Jonathan Northcroft

Saturday May 03 2025, 8.00pm, The Sunday Times

 

The decline of José Mourinho: how Special One became ‘ordinary’

 

There it was, that time-honoured sight of José Mourinho running on to the pitch after victory. In a hostile away stadium, eyeballing the world and wearing that face of vindication.

But the hair was white and instead of a young man’s suit he wore a comfy stadium jacket. Then he went for a knee slide and toppled head-first into the grass.

This was Mourinho, at Trabzonspor in November, celebrating probably the best single moment in his first season with Fenerbahce — a Sofyan Amrabat goal scored in the 12th minute of stoppage time to complete a comeback win in a big Super Lig fixture.

Fenerbahce had two curious penalties awarded against them on review, prompting Mourinho, in his press conference, to speculate that “the VAR was, what, drinking coffee?”

He went on. “It’s even worse than I was told. We play against opponents … but we also play against the system. Nobody abroad wants to watch the Turkish league. It’s too grey, too dark. Smells bad.”

 

Surveying the whole mini-drama from a distance it’s hard not to see the Mourinho that critics see, the tyro once named “Rockstar of the Year” by the Spanish Rolling Stone, turned into an ageing performer reduced to lesser gigs in venues even he denigrates.

The impression has been there for a while and there was mirth when, in his previous job, at Roma, he celebrated winning the Europa Conference League by having an image of the trophy tattooed on a shoulder. “Love the goat but this midlife crisis…” was one on the kinder comments on Instagram.

 

He’s 62 now. Fenerbahce appear destined to finish runners-up to Galatasaray again, and were dumped out of Europe by Rangers, and the biggest stories he has written in Turkey have been cause célèbres: those post-match comments in Trabzon, a red card in the Europa League against Manchester United, a ban for pinching the nose of the Galatasaray head coach, Okan Buruk, a storm when he branded Galatasaray’s coaching staff “monkeys”.

 

But Mourinho is the guy who once defended his declining record by quoting Hegel — “the truth is in the whole” — and though younger football followers might associate the Portuguese mainly with controversies and dark energy, those of us who experienced the first half of his career can’t shake off the phenomenon he was.

We knew “Special One” José, disruptor José, peak tactician José, the storm that blew in from Portugal and swept up four league championships, five cups and the big two European trophies in his first four completed seasons of top-flight management.

 

He was astonishing and even if, in terms of the main European leagues, he is now offstage, you can still discern his presence — if you know his career properly. The Premier League, today, has twice the number of Portuguese coaches as English ones, including one of his former players (Nuno Espírito Santo). Its champions, Liverpool, benefited from the training formula he pioneered — tactical periodisation (a then-revolutionary idea of blending fitness and tactics work in training) — and the favourites to win the Champions League are Paris Saint-Germain, built by a sporting director (Luís Campos) who is Mourinho’s friend and former scout.

 

So what happened to José? Is the specialness gone or just dormant? It is understood that Portugal are considering asking him to replace Roberto Martínez as the national coach and lead Cristiano Ronaldo et al to the World Cup — a challenge Mourinho, despite his €10.5million (£8.94million) net salary at Fenerbahce, may find impossible to resist. It would be another, perhaps final, chance in football’s main theatre.

 

It’s 20 years since his astonishing first Premier League title with Chelsea, who lost only once and conceded only 15 goals (still a record) as they blew away the old order of Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal and Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. It’s ten years since his most recent one — his last league championship anywhere — clinched in his second spell with Chelsea with a 1-0 win against Crystal Palace exactly a decade ago this weekend.

 

Mourinho’s 2014-15 Chelsea stand the test of time. They were top from the first weekend to the last and a brilliantly engineered team, blending stalwarts such as John Terry with young stars like Eden Hazard and superb Mourinho signings like Diego Costa and Cesc Fàbregas.

I interviewed him at the end of that campaign and he was in his element scotching the idea that, thanks to the influence of his nemesis, Pep Guardiola, coaching was shifting from the old pragmatic principles he perfected to a job where philosophies and style were all-important.

 

“When people talk about a new generation of coaches, what is that new generation?” Mourinho scoffed. “The generation will always be the ones that win.”

He was looking forward to evolving Chelsea, to making more top-quality signings and instilling even higher standards in his group and creating a side that would last “ten years”. He was gone in six months. The interview took place the day after Chelsea returned from a silly post-season tour to Asia and Australia and he was clearly disgruntled by the trip. Problems started when he made the good-hearted mistake of giving his players extra holidays to recover.

It left Chelsea undercooked at the start of 2015-16. The club didn’t back his recruitment plans (Pedro arrived from Barcelona but the other “big” signings were Baba Rahman, Kenedy and Asmir Begovic) and then came the Eva Carneiro controversy.

In Chelsea’s opening game against Swansea City, Carneiro, a club doctor, rushed on to the pitch to treat Hazard, with Mourinho yelling at her not to. He felt Hazard was OK and, with Chelsea chasing a winning goal at 2-2, didn’t want to delay the game.

Carneiro alleged he called her “filha da puta” (“daughter of a whore”) and, after he relieved her of first-team duties, sued for constructive dismissal, winning a rumoured £5million payoff. The fallout was nuclear, according to several sources close to the situation, ruining morale in the camp. When Mourinho was sacked in December, Chelsea were 16th.

 

It does seem a dividing line in his career. By the end of 2014-15, Mourinho had won 22 trophies in 12 full seasons as a manager, if you count Community Shields and Super Cups — which he definitely does. The ten years since have brought three trophies. Before (across 749 matches) he lost only one game in eight; since (across 445 matches) he has lost about one in four.

When people get older sometimes assets become flaws. There was always a restlessness about Mourinho and an urge to take action — both times he won the Champions League he left his club immediately for the next job — and it made him a king of substitutions and in-game changes. But it meant being out of work never sat well with him; he has been quick to take jobs. He accepted Roma in 2021, for example, when advisers said he should wait — and ten days later Florentino Pérez called to offer him a return to Real Madrid, but it was too late.

 

Perhaps the first opportunity he might wish he had scrutinised more closely was United, the club he took over in May 2016, five months after being sacked by Chelsea for a second time. His first two seasons remain United’s best post-Fergie period. He won the Europa League and League Cup and finished second with United’s highest post-Fergie points total.

But the job was not quite as imagined. Initially there was transfer backing but then a turning off of the money tap. He told Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman at the time, that he’d win the league if he could add a strong left winger and had Ivan Perisic lined up for £25million, but was rebuffed. And working for a Glazers-owned operation didn’t make a person feel special. He couldn’t use the training-ground gym after hours because there was no supervisor and every expense — like a new desk or even a signed shirt for a guest — had to be approved by the club hierarchy.

 

He and his staff lived in the Lowry Hotel and at the end of 2017-18 his No2, Rui Faria, quit to return to London and spend more time with his family. Faria had been with him since 2001, when he coached União de Leiria, and was more than a normal assistant. Having studied under Vítor Frade, the father of tactical periodisation, Faria brought it to Mourinho and together they turned it from a concept “not even [written] on paper” into a practical method.

 

Faria, in a way, was a Peter Taylor to Mourinho’s Brian Clough: able to challenge the boss and, as someone central to the day-to-day work, a conduit to the players. “It was good cop, bad cop — and the good cop left,” a source with knowledge of that United camp says. Issues with players stacked up. After Paul Pogba became a World Cup winner, Mourinho found him harder to manage. Pogba recalled their relationship as being “like boyfriend and girlfriend, we were breaking up and making up all the time”.

There was also a decline in player availability and it’s interesting that, since 2018, Mourinho has been working with Italian fitness coaches, rather than periodisation specialists, and that his staff — which at Chelsea in 2004-05 included Faria, André Villas-Boas, Steve Clarke and Brendan Rodgers — has comprised fewer heavyweight figures.

 

Tottenham Hotspur, whom he joined in November 2019, 11 months after being dismissed by United, was another job where he felt the backing was not as advertised — and Daniel Levy sacked him in the week of a League Cup final against Manchester City. On John Obi Mikel’s The Obi One podcast in 2023, Mourinho talked about the times he’d been fired. “The most ridiculous one was a club that has an empty trophy room [and] sacks me two days before a final,” he said of Spurs.

 

Despite winning the club’s first trophy in 14 years, his spell with Roma ended in another dismissal after clashes with the ownership around recruitment. “I always say the better players you have, the better coach you are. You can demand more, be more tactical,” Mourinho has said, and once you take one second-tier job it can become hard to look good enough to move back up a level.

In-game changes become less of a super-strength with weaker squads, and there’s style. The cliché of Mourinho as a habitually negative coach ignores his Real team twice smashing the La Liga record for goals scored (they still hold it with 121, in 2011-12) or him boldly using Eidur Gudjohnsen as a midfielder and Damien Duff as a full back at Chelsea.

But what is habitual is pragmatism. He will always design game plans around the opposition. So, in charge of lesser teams, in the era of attacking, possession football, his default in big games has been the counterattack. Another way changes in the game have affected him is the tricks he pioneered (like the three-man midfield in England, or high-level opposition analysis using video) have become ubiquitous.

 

He took the Fenerbahce job, five months after leaving Roma, because he was already itching to work again. “Being around players, in training grounds, is José’s happy place,” a friend said. The challenge of dethroning Galatasaray appealed but was made more difficult by Galatasaray’s coup of loaning Victor Osimhen on deadline day. The Super Lig’s one truly elite star has been a difference-maker in numerous games. Fenerbahce are on course for a points total that would have made them champions in all but the past two Turkish seasons — although fewer than the 99 they won as runners-up to Galatasaray in 2023-24.

Bagis Erten, a renowned Turkish journalist and Eurosport producer, paints a fascinating portrait. “The first thing I have to highlight is Mourinho in Turkey is a big deal. Probably, he’s the best ever manager to come here. But, as you may already know, there are two José Mourinhos and we’ve seen both.

“One is a very hardworking guy, who really analyses his rivals and has strategies to stop them. The other is the Mourinho who always explains [defeats] with other things. The conspiracy man. But Turkey is a conspiracy country, everyone believes things are fixed and manipulated. He was a ‘Special One’ in England but when talking about the conspiracy, he’s an ordinary one in Turkey.”

 

Mourinho’s other problems include poor performance in the biggest games — Sunday’s clash with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Besiktas is Fenerbahce’s last chance to beat a fellow top-four side — and familiar criticism over the style of play. “Fenerbahce has been known as the Brazil of Turkey. But they are playing like Uruguay right now,” Erten says.

 

But his press conferences are sensational and he has improved players both young and old in his squad, Erten adds, and despite an addiction to changing managers (Mourinho was Fenerbahce’s 17th appointment in ten years), the club president, Ali Koc, has said he wants to retain Mourinho for another year.

Watching The Obi One podcast you’re struck by the paternal relationship between Mourinho and his former player. They speak a lot about the old days, of Mourinho sending drinks bottles flying in half-time rants at Stamford Bridge and yelling at Gary Cahill and Terry when they were struggling with a passing exercise (“You two can f*** off! I’m going to sign Rafa Varane”).

They agree players have changed and it’s not possible to manage dressing rooms in the old way; another issue Mourinho has grappled with, as football changes, is his instinct that the best love is tough love. The friend says he has worked on it and there was the story of how, in March, he dropped Allan Saint-Maximin after questioning his fitness levels. Saint-Maximin posted on social media: “When a lie takes the elevator, the truth takes the stairs. It takes longer, but it arrives in the end.”

Mourinho’s next press conference was classic. “I didn’t know Saint-Maximin had a gift for poetry,” he said. “I’m not bad at it either. When a footballer works well, works hard and trains every day, he can be in good form and climb up the stairs … by contrast, if a player doesn’t train well, turns up late, is overweight … then he needs to use the lift.”

But Saint-Maximin returned to the XI in a burst of form and two weeks later was allowed to bring his puppy to training, which Mourinho was filmed cuddling and stroking, in his stadium jacket, with his white hair.

 

[der Berliner 4,187]

40 minutes ago, buster. said:

The red numbers that have accompanied us from that moment led to "our Gotterdammerung" and they have persisted ever since.

 

We need to rid ourselves of the red before we can look forward with any confidence.

 

 

I would assume that there are very few (big/first tier/great) clubs on this planet who rake in any sort of "profit" or write black numbers. Some of the Portuguese "South American player-import and sell them on" teams like Porto, maybe. Or those profiting on the odd insane transfer fee paid for this or that player, possibly securing them financially for a season or two (essentially what we did with Scottish football's lesser lights in the 1990s and early 2000s).

 

I know what you mean, though.

[buster. 5,658]

2 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

I would assume that there are very few (big/first tier/great) clubs on this planet who rake in any sort of "profit" or write black numbers.  

Not many have been liquidated.

[der Berliner 4,187]

1 minute ago, buster. said:

Not many have been liquidated.

... nor have we. 

[Scott7 6,774]

3 minutes ago, buster. said:

Not many have been liquidated.

Not so many operate in hostile environments.

[buster. 5,658]

4 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

... nor have we. 

Yes we have and its better we don't ignore the fact but actually learn from it.

 

Regarding the continuation, I am not saying we started again but as a football club we ballsed up our finances big time and got badly burnt. 

[buster. 5,658]

7 minutes ago, Scott7 said:

Not so many operate in hostile environments.

It was our own fault or rather Sir Duped of Murray. 

 

 

[Scott7 6,774]

48 minutes ago, buster. said:

It was our own fault or rather Sir Duped of Murray. 

 

 

Rangers got what ultimately they deserved.

The point I make is that Real Madrid for example have massive debt but no one seems to want to do much about it. There was arm waving about ten/twelve years ago but everything seemed to settle down and carry on.

[buster. 5,658]

12 minutes ago, Scott7 said:

Rangers got what ultimately they deserved.

The point I make is that Real Madrid for example have massive debt but no one seems to want to do much about it. There was arm waving about ten/twelve years ago but everything seemed to settle down and carry on.

I labour the point because it seems memories are short and selective for some.

 

Real Madrid are establishment in a fundamentally corrupt country where football plays an important part.

 

 

Edited 8 hours ago by buster.