Jose Mourinho isn't done yet – the Special One thinks he still has one more top job in him

jose mourinho isn't done yet – the special one thinks he still has one more top job in him

Jose Mourinho isn’t done yet – The Special One thinks he still has one more top job in him

A return to the long-form interview this week for Jose Mourinho and when it comes to his time in English football it felt like he was picking up mid-conversation again. A skewering of Ed Woodward, wondering aloud whether the Premier League charges against Manchester City might yet deliver him the 2017-2018 title, and all the jobs he could have had but elected to reject by virtue of his great flaw. Mourinho is, according to Mourinho, just too damn loyal.

This is, of course, Jose playing the character of Jose. The character he slips into when required –  especially between jobs when he deems it necessary to remind the world of his track record and bury his enemies.

The Manchester United period, which was the focus of his interview with Rio Ferdinand, was a case in point. Woodward? An intelligent man, Mourinho shrugged, but “not prepared for the sport side of it.” Compare, he said to Ferdinand, the mediocre team he, Mourinho, led to the Europa League triumph in 2017 to the great United team of the late 2000s in which Ferdinand played. “If you want to make a joke,” Mourinho invited, “make a joke”.

This is the essential Mourinho: protect the brand at all costs. While the post-Sir Alex Ferguson decade has indeed been deeply dysfunctional for United, one is unlikely to find Mourinho admitting to any errors of judgement on his own part. The man ploughs on and he wants a new job as soon as possible. When he was with Roma, he says, he turned down the Portugal national team and something in Saudi Arabia.

Mourinho the manager does not come cheap. He also uses the breaks in the management career to leverage his considerable commercial power. The Ferdinand interview was part of a sponsor’s agreement and the latest commercial with the sports card company, Topps, demonstrates that he remains a reliable asset for advertisers. In short, cashflow is not a problem.

The problem is that Mourinho is addicted to management – not to mention the status and wealth it brings, even if one could hardly argue he has always behaved as if he loves the game. He sees no life beyond the job which has sustained him now for 24 years. “I don’t enjoy any day without work,” he told Ferdinand, “I don’t understand people that speak about sabbatical time because sabbatical time gives me only one thing: depression.”

When Mourinho talks, football’s great problem solver emerges

So what next?

At 61 years old, Roma was the lowest down the hierarchy he has managed since Porto. It will be 20 years next month since his famous touchline dart against Old Trafford when Porto scored the equaliser that saw them eliminate United, en route to Champions League triumph. He was already a rising star by then, with a Uefa Cup win the previous year, but March 2004 and what followed put him on a different trajectory.

The answer to the above is: he believes he can go again. He wants to manage anew one of Europe’s biggest clubs. He has seen it in the career of Carlo Ancelotti, another who seems incapable of stepping away. Ancelotti had three years in charge of Napoli and Everton, below the usual benchmark for jobs that a serial Champions League winner might take but neither proved terminal for the big ambition. Ancelotti then won his fourth managerial Champions League at the age Mourinho is now.

When Mourinho talks about himself he is entirely predictable: he is Jose’s biggest fan. Under the thin coating of humility he applies, the fault for any shortcomings is never his. But it is when he talks about football that you see the great problem solver emerge. How a team of limited ability can be organised to beat one of better players on any given day – that is also the essence of Mourinho.

He only skirted around that subject with Ferdinand, but it goes to the heart of Mourinho. His career has traced that route. The Chelsea of 2004 were very well-resourced but still trying to break the monopoly of the Premier League’s big two at the time. His Inter Milan were Champions League underdogs but won it nonetheless. His 2010s Real Madrid had to face the best team of the era, perhaps any era, in Barcelona. His Chelsea Part II and United were both rebuilding jobs with varying degrees of success.

So it goes on through post-Pochettino Tottenham and then to Roma, Mourinho returning to a club approaching the second or third tier European status of his Porto of more than 20 years hence. That 2004 win was truly the last Champions League miracle. No team from outside of Europe’s big four leagues has won it since.

Mourinho has been right about many players – it was he who identified early potential issues with Paul Pogba and then Dele Alli that would eventually ring true. He might have been wrong about Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah. He remains an astonishingly talented communicator – in four different languages.

Of course, he also habitually regards himself as the victim of events. The Roma sacking, after two Uefa finals in two seasons, was subtly presented as the latest injustice. He is a shrewd networker too. He knows how to speak to the kind of people who own football clubs. He casually dropped into his conversation with Ferdinand that he was an old acquaintance of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and heaped the Ineos billionaire with praise.

That is the genius for renewal that has sustained Mourinho over all these years at the top. It is, all said, a remarkable achievement for the man who came from nowhere – the interpreter for Bobby Robson who worked his way up from a coach in the youth teams at his hometown club Vitoria Setubal. A former PE teacher whose progress was painfully slow in football and then, astonishingly swift. That is the other fascinating part of the Mourinho story but given it does not suit the image he seeks to project – he just will not tell it.

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