If you type ‘the special one’ in Google search box and hit
Enter, you will get links about Jose Mourinho! Google is so clever that he
knows who the special one in club football is. In fact, Mourinho, Portuguese by
birth, he described himself as the special one in 2007 for the first time in
Chelsea. After his first stint as the manager in the Blues, much water has been
passed through Bagmati! ;) He again came back to Stamford Bridge and won a
league title already. We will talk about him in little more detail now.
Let’s start with Saturday’s night performance against this-year-promoted
Hull City. Hull’s previous two games were outstanding and they had taken all
the 6 points. Yesterday as well, they looked invincible in defending their
post. United constantly tried to break their wall, but with no avail. At last,
on the 3rd minute of injury time, Rashford found the net with
Rooney’s pass from the end line. So the final score was 1 – 0 to United and
they finished their first 3 games of the new season in perfectly perfect
manner.
Morning shows the day
Mourinho was never a good football player, forget great!
Salute to his instincts that he knew he cannot be a successful player. Instead,
lets become a football coach and manager like his father. Being a child,
Mourinho used to watch his father giving training to players of Rio Ave, a
small club at Lisbon. He studied sports science and did a lot of coaching
courses in between to emerge as one of the greatest football manager of all
time! Interestingly, his father was also not a notable player and coach. Senior
Mourinho got to play a match for Portuguese national team.
Cutting the story short, the mighty Jose Mourinho
was actually a translator and interpreter for a foreign manager in
Portugal. Back on 1992, the great Sir
Bobby Johnson was appointed as the head coach of Sporting CP, a popular and
historical club of Lisbon. Since Sir Bobby was an English, he could not speak
Portuguese. (Actually Sir Bobby was traditional manager, otherwise he could
have learnt the Portuguese in three weeks as Mourinho claims to learn Italian
language in three weeks when appointed as manager in Inter Milan. On the other
hand, Mourinho’s counterpart Pep Guardiola actually took more than six months
to learn German when he had to coach Bayern Munich.) Mourinho is a lucky fellow
that he bagged this great opportunity to collaborate with the great player and manager
Johnson. Mourinho was blessed with Barcelona’s assistant manager position due
to the same Johnson. He openly expressed his intent that he wants to become
assistant manager not only the translator of Johnson. And Johnson was so
generous that he let Mourinho to instruct players on diet and other general
training. After Johnson left Barcelona, Luis Vaan Gaal came to take charge. And
Vaan Gaal seen the potential in Mourinho, and let him coach Barca B team. When
Mourinho became the full manager of Porto, he named simple 20 km jog as
‘aerobic exercise’. He was such a clever manager that he made people think him
as a unique and talented manager.
Success story
Mourinho started his full coach job in July 2001 with Uniao de Leiria, a third division football club of central Portugal. With his excellent show, he was handpicked for Porto job next season. Porto club witnessed one of the historical achievement with Mourinho and his coaching staff. He won treble (Portuguese super cup, Premiera Liga, and the mighty UEFA Champions League) in 2003-2004 season. Now, the whole world took Mourinho as a massive and dangerous manager. Mourinho now could bag job at any big club. But he chose Chelsea because he always liked new challenges. Chelsea back in 2004 was an ordinary Premier League club with history of winning a title 50 years ago. Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich had spent a lot of money into the club and wanted to achieve something big. Abramovich naturally picked Mourinho citing his past record and successful run as manager.
Now, it comes the widely popular ‘I’m the special one’ saying. On 2 July 2004, Mourinho was presented as the new manager of the Blues after Cludio Ranieri (he is the one who won EPL with minnow Leicester in 2015/16) got sacked. “You may say I’m a bit arrogant. But I’m the European champion. I’m the special one.” Those are the exact words Mourinho confidently spoken before the media. Then what else? The British media started to tag him as the special one.
Mourinho won two consecutive PL titles with Chelsea with players like Petr Cech, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Arjen Robben and Didier Drogba. Being an arrogant (he himself accepts this) person, Mourinho was in continuous struggle with the owner Abramovich and other sport directors of the club. Later, Mourinho and the club parted on mutual consent. Mourinho went to Italy to coach Inter Milan. Inter was already a powerhouse of Italian football, but they were little shadowed by the likes of Juventus, AC Milan and Roma at that point of time.
Let me here tell you interesting thing about this cycle of football managers. Only few high-level managers are out there, and they go from one club to another to manage. And sometimes managers end up coming to the same club twice or even thrice. Before Mourinho, Roberto Mancini was handling Inter. The same Mancini then went to manage City for four years. He again came back to Inter in 2014 and was recently sacked by the club. Similarly, Ancelotti (now in Bayern), Pelligrini (now jobless), Ranieri (Leicester), Rafael Benitez (now in Newcastle) etc are some managers who goes from one country to another to manage different clubs. And repeat!
Okay, back to Mourinho in Inter! His first season 2008-9 was so good that Inter won the domestic league with margin of 10 points. But their Champions League journey was so short and could not make it to the quarter finals. In his next season at Inter, he got to kiss unbelievable achievements. After 38 years, Inter had reached CL final. They had already won Serie A and Coppa Italia that year making Mourinho a most sought manager in Italy. Eventually they won CL as well. Mourinho was on cloud nine, and why not! He got second treble win and second CL title as a manager.
2010 – 2011 : Manuel Pelligrini out, Mourinho in. Place: Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid. Yes, Mourinho strengthened his already sparkling resume by becoming the manager of Real Madrid. In three seasons with Real, he could not win Champions League though. Mourinho success story took a little pause with only one La Liga and one Copa Del Rey in Bernabeu. In his second stint at Chelsea, he won a premier league and a league cup.
The arrogant one!
Mourinho is known for his must win attitude. He want to win irrespective of whatever he has to do to win a football match. He likes his players to play pressing football. Nowadays, Pressing from the touch line and counter attack are vital elements of his teachings. Before, Mourinho has successfully applied defensive managerial technique and bus parking style to win games. He uses the power of psychology to motivate his players. Mourinho’s critics say he has ruined the beauty of football. He provokes his players to play strong and rough if they are losing on the field. Barcelona or Spain plays ‘beautiful football’; the term coined by John Cryff while being the Barcelona manager.
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