The people who used to work with Sven-Göran Eriksson tell a story about the former England manager, going back to the European Championship in 2004, when he did something that was totally out of character. He almost lost his temper.
England had just been knocked out by Portugal. Inside the dressing room was a scene of desolation and the Football Association’s staff saw something in his face that day they had never seen before: fury. A bad refereeing decision had denied Sol Campbell a late winner and Eriksson wanted to know where the official was. He was puce with anger. He left the dressing room to rap on the referee’s door and, when it swung open, there were a few interminable moments when nobody could quite be sure how far he was willing to take it. At which point Sven, once again, reverted to being Sven. “Mr referee,” he said, holding out his hand. “I wanted to say thank you for a good game.”
It is a great story, classic Sven, and probably a reminder to all of us that, once you reach a certain point of your life, it is difficult to switch personalities, to adjust to new settings and, in Eriksson’s case, reinvent himself as a shouter. Of course, people can change. It just does not tend to happen – unless, of course, that person actually wants to change.
More fool me, then, for wondering whether José Mourinho might have emerged from the breakdown of his Manchester United reign with even a shade more humility. It was only a passing thought but I must confess I was foolish enough to wonder if he might understand the old saying that you learn the most from failure. Would we see a more soft-focus Mourinho? Better and humbler for the experience?
The answer should probably have come as no surprise and was delivered in that television interview, as a pundit at the Asian Cup, when all the good points he made about United needing to modernize behind the scenes were accompanied by so much buck-passing that one half-expected him to complain about the half-time oranges at Old Trafford being too sour or the pillows in the Special Suite, c/o the Lowry hotel, not being plump enough for his liking. Of everything Mourinho had to say, there was not a single line to indicate there was one part of the job that he, the manager, might have done better. No words of personal regret about his own performance. No acknowledgment that what is happening now, with Ole Gunnar Solskjær leading a renascent team to seven straight victories, is an indictment of Mourinho’s own work. Nothing to explain why the same players who have excelled in the last month looked so unhappy and restricted under the previous manager. Or why, metaphorically speaking, the skies above Old Trafford are suddenly not quite so slate-grey.
Mourinho clearly does not possess the quality of being able to acknowledge his own errors. It was everybody and everything else: the players, the structure, the lack of a sporting director (ignoring the fact he strongly resisted having anyone above him dictating transfer policy at Real Madrid) and, true to form, all accompanied with various reminders of his greatness – at the expense of some of those he appears to consider way beneath him.
It was probably naive to expect anything else but wearying, all the same, to be reminded that Mourinho still leaves the impression he thinks he should be on a banknote and, to borrow the old Henry James quote, that he is still the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease. “If you speak about [Pep] Guardiola, about [Carlo] Ancelotti, about the ones in which I belong, which have a career of victories for a long, long period, where are the young ones in terms of a real impact of results?” Mourinho said. “Where are they? One thing is image, another thing is communication, another is a good structure behind and another thing is to win and get good results. It’s very easy to play ‘well’ and not win. It’s very easy to be behind a certain idea of a certain football without results.”
Any ideas whom he could possibly mean? Mourinho has had a strange fixation with Jürgen Klopp for some time and, if we know anything about the Portuguese, it is safe to assume he will not appreciate the way Mauricio Pochettino, one of the candidates to take over at Old Trafford, has been touted as a potential upgrade.
Mourinho did not mention either man by name but, then again, that is what he does. He wants you to read between the lines and work it out for yourself without anyone being able to say he has deliberately belittled another manager. It is similar to the way he used to get Manuel Pellegrini’s name wrong and call him “Pellegrino” for all those years, accidentally on purpose, or that time in Italy when it was the Roma coach, Zdenek Zeman, who did not show him enough respect. “Zeman?” Mourinho asked. “I do not know him. Where does he play? Is he a coach? Sorry, I did not know that. But now that I am on holiday I will look him up on Google to find out who he is and what he has won.”
Mourinho, like Sir Alex Ferguson, can be an accomplished actor. Hand that man an Oscar, and don’t be surprised, in the event of Pochettino ending up at Old Trafford, if Mourinho starts referring to him as “Manuel”. The managerial equivalent of playground hair-pulling.
For someone with the ego of a small planet, is it possible Mourinho might be riddled with insecurity? Mourinho’s default setting is to remind everyone of his trophy count and, sure enough, he managed to crowbar in that one, too. And, however strange it is that he feels the need to point it out, what he says is essentially true. Mourinho is a trophy machine. There are 25 in total if, as he does, you count the Community Shield. That is greatness – even if he did not show it at Old Trafford.
It is just a shame, perhaps, that Mourinho lacks the humility to understand that people should learn the most about themselves from failure. What he conveniently ignores is that United’s renaissance is a damning indictment of his own shortcomings, a reminder that even the greatest managers can lose form and the hard evidence that he is not actually quite as brilliant as he tells everyone he is.
If Mourinho was capable of self-reflection, he would look at the improvement in Marcus Rashford, among others, and there would be a surge of professional embarrassment. He would see Paul Pogba playing, once again, at the point of maximum expression and realize how self-defeating it was to fall out with such a player. A man with humility would understand. That man, however, is not Mourinho.
Even the small things. The fact Solskjær is moving into a house would not, in ordinary circumstances, be newsworthy. Except Mourinho, of course, remained in a hotel for two and a half years – something, I am told, that troubled Sir Alex Ferguson, among others – without ever seeming to realize, or care, how unsettling it was for the club that he would not put down roots.
Mourinho now complains that, in Ferguson’s day, the club would have given the manager carte blanche to move out any player. “I think it was when Manchester United sold David Beckham to Real Madrid, if I’m not wrong, and the phrase I kept with me from the biggest one in the Premier League – Sir Alex Ferguson – was, ‘The day a player is more important than the club, goodbye’. Not any more. Not any more. Because there are many things behind [the scenes] now that mean it is difficult to create a situation as linear as this one.”
What he fails to see is that Ferguson was there 26 years, meaning he tended to outlast the players and had the full trust of the people at the top of the club. Mourinho, on the other hand, is infamous for the way he never lasts long anywhere and United figured Pogba – and, for that matter, Anthony Martial – could conceivably play for another decade after the manager was gone.
If Mourinho feels undermined, it is because he was – very much so. But perhaps he should think a little harder about the reasons why, or how spectacularly short-sighted it would have been, knowing what we do now, if he had been allowed to get his way.
Will Mourinho ever see it that way? Not a hope. “I am José Mourinho,” he said, when he took the job at Real Madrid in 2010, “I don’t change, I arrive with all my qualities and all my defects.” He will be back soon, possibly at Madrid, as mulish as ever, still refusing to bend for anyone. And the saddest, most bizarre thing of all: the Premier League feels a better place without him.
Sinclair’s spy tip was no laughing matter for Keegan
Amid all this talk about spying on opponents it is worth remembering that the best way for managers to get inside information is actually through the players themselves. There will always be someone who has a mate in the opposition dressing room, possibly a disaffected player, who will be happy to spill the beans when it comes to who is in the team, who is out of favour, who might be carrying a knock and various other titbits.
All of which reminds me of a story Kevin Keegan tells in his autobiography about his time as Manchester City manager, on the way to an FA Cup tie at Leicester City, when Trevor Sinclair wandered down the team coach and, winking, pushed a folded piece of paper into the manager’s hand.
When Keegan unfolded it, he was taken aback to find the 11 names of the Leicester players in their team formation – just confirmed from a dressing-room mole in the east Midlands. “Crikey,” Keegan joked. “I take it you’ve given them ours as well.” At which point Sinclair decided to come clean. “Yeah, I have actually, gaffer.”
Keegan could laugh about it later – his team won 3-1 – but it is fair to say he did not find it too amusing at the time that one of his players was leaking the line-up to the opposition.
Believe in Burton
Memo to Burton Albion: don’t despair. Chelsea once won 21-0 over two legs in a European tie against the Luxembourg side Jeunesse Hautcharage. Not even Manchester City, 9-0 ahead after the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final, can manage that when they travel to Burton this week … can they?
(The Guardian)
