The Mourinho riddle

Football

The coach of Real Madrid holds a seven-point lead in the league, ahead of Barcelona, the world’s most lauded team. Yet he appears to be plotting his own departure.

The stories that Jose Mourinho will quit Spain after this season to return to England could be stopped in an instant. Like the baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson was asked to do, all he needs to do is “Say it ain’t so, Jose.”

The mass media wait on his every word. They wait, in vain, for the highest-paid coach in the global game to say he signed a four-year contract two years ago and will not break it.

But no. Mourinho has fed the rumors about himself.  Just over a month ago, in a recorded ‘BBC’ news programme, the Portuguese coach spoke of returning to England and staying there for a very long time.

“Get me a good club,” he said, repeating the request for emphasis.

It is not the first time he has stated an intention to coach again in the English Premier League. But the story picked up credibility when the Madrid news media, some of them considered the official messengers for Real Madrid,  criticised as unacceptable the brutal tactics of Mourinho’s team against Barcelona.

The Madrid sports daily ‘Marca’ followed that up a week ago with a verbatim account of a training-ground disagreement between the Portuguese coach and the Spanish players, notably defender Sergio Ramos. Then Siro Lopez, a leading journalist, said that Mourinho would walk away from his reported $13.5 million-a-year post after this season, no matter whether the team wins or loses.
Lopez said he had first-hand information from Mourinho’s closest ally.

A similar line, also quoting a “source close to Mourinho,” ran in an English newspaper, ‘The Sunday Times’, this week.

If uncontested, rumours become believed as fact. Mourinho makes no move to contradict those, however.

The man who called himself “Not one out of the bottle, a special one,” has long written his own headlines.

The story now is that half of the top clubs in England are on the lookout.

Mourinho has said in the past that he regards himself as the successor to Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, if only the 70-year-old Sir Alex were thinking of retirement. Ferguson says that he is not ready to go for at least three more seasons.

The Glazer family, which runs the club from across the Atlantic in the United States, will say nothing in public. But with a winner like Mourinho out there, making himself available for hire, will the owners be afraid of missing the bus that is apparently ready to roll? Whether Mourinho’s pragmatism, which puts winning before style, would appeal to the majority of United followers – or to Bobby Charlton, who remains on the United board – is another matter.

But if he is on the market, his record is bound to attract attention. He has won in every league he has coached – in Portugal with FC Porto, in England with Chelsea, in Italy with Inter Milan. A victory in Spain, with Madrid, would complete the record.

If United decides there is no vacancy unless or until the incumbent decides so, where else might Mourinho reappear?

Manchester City has the money, thanks to the sheiks of Abu Dhabi. City’s own coach, Roberto Mancini, was Abu Dhabi’s choice, but the team is out of the Champions League, out of the two English cups, and must win the Premier League to justify the unprecedented spending of the owners.

Next, and least likely until a few weeks ago, comes Arsenal. That is Arsene Wenger’s domain. He has recreated the team in his own image, charming when it is on song, flowing as no other team in England can.

However, the natives are restless. Arsenal has won nothing for more than six years. The fans turned on Wenger quite viciously over his decision to take off the 18-year-old wunderkind, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, during a losing performance against Manchester United.

The unrest continued, loudly, when Arsenal went two goals down at home to Aston Villa in the FA Cup last week, though it was appeased somewhat by a second-half blitz of three goals in less than eight minutes to turn the match around.

Wenger and Arsenal are, like Manchester United and Ferguson, an item. The style is the man. But both clubs are owned by Americans and, in sports as in life, winning is the bottom line to many successful Americans.

The grapevine has a solution to this. Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Perez, is a longtime admirer of Wenger. He has twice courted the Frenchman, and twice Wenger has said that his love for Arsenal is too strong to break, even for the illustrious Madrid.

But if there is a two-way ticket, if the owner of Arsenal is listening to the crowd and looking down the barrel of his club possibly missing out on the Champions League next season and with it $50 million in income, who knows? Mourinho back in London, where his family enjoyed life? Wenger in Madrid, where the 80,000 paying members will not take the win-at-all-costs pragmatism over the style they demand? Could be.

Then again, there is reason to expect movement at Arsenal’s neighbour, Tottenham Hotspur. The team is riding higher than Arsenal at the moment, but its coach, Harry Redknapp, is in court on charges of tax evasion. And in any case, Redknapp is considered the leading English contender to take over England’s national team this summer.

Once again, style might be the issue. Spurs play with a cavalier panache, almost as if the attacks are off the cuff. Mourinho is structured to the point of being dictatorial.  Two English clubs might tolerate his methods.

Chelsea – despite the fallout with Roman Abramovich after Mourinho’s previous relationship there ended sourly – has appeared to be exactly what Mourinho set it up to be: The club closest to what he call his methodology.

And then there is Liverpool, which was Chelsea’s foremost rival when Mourinho there. Many were the dour contests between Liverpool red and Chelsea blue, and bitter were the experiences of Liverpool squeezing Chelsea out of the Champions League – and Liverpool going on to win the one thing Chelsea has not yet, the Champions League, in 2005.

The crux, I believe, of Mourinho’s problem with Real Madrid is not that he is Portuguese and the players are predominantly Spanish. It is that the team, much too powerful and too gifted for 18 of its opponents in La Liga, dislikes being ordered to change its nature, to play conservatively, and to kick fellow Spaniards playing for the Barcelona side.