Jose Mourinho: Does the Premiership really need him?
Prior to Mark Hughes’ sacking and the appointment of Roberto Mancini at Manchester City the club were linked to Jose Mourinho. With Liverpool struggling and Rafa Benitez said to be on the way out the club were linked to Jose Mourinho. With Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson surely on his way to retirement soon the club have been linked to Jose Mourinho. Seeing a pattern here? It seems that every big club in England is destined to be linked to the former Chelsea man, why is this?
There’s no doubt that Jose’s a big character; his time at Chelsea will always be remembered for his memorable interviews, confrontations with opposition players and managers and his behaviour on the touchline. He’s one of those people who, even if you hate them, you’re still interested in watching them to see what they’ll do next. And hatred for Mourinho is surprisingly quite hard to find despite what a controversial character he is.
It is natural that those with previous success will be linked with jobs where success is available – in fact, the City job would surely have been pefect for Mourinho as he’s already proven that he can turn unlimited money into a title winning team – he didn’t make audacious bids for players who would never go for Chelsea, instead he turned to the likes of Didier Drogba and Michael Essien who were making names for themselves but were not yet world beaters and he helped them become world beaters. A great man manager but not such a great sportsman, Mourinho brought charm and controversy to the Premiership in equal doses.
And there’s no denying he was controversial – when he had a touchline ban his assistants would mysteriously speak into their woolly hats; he accused then-Barcelona boss Frank Rijkaard of going into a referee’s dressing room which led to death threats for that referee; he admitted that he encouraged his players to cheat when at Porto and even tried to keep the ball away from Lazio players to time-waste back in a UEFA Cup tie a number of years back. Jose’s not the best of sports.
Compare him to the likes of Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez or Mark Hughes and you’ll see why Mourinho’s so popular in this country – England loves real characters and Mourinho had character to spare. But why is he linked to every job in the country? Well he’s said to be one of the best managers out there but is he really? Mourinho excelled with Porto but even he admitted that he cheated to achieve what they did. Then at Chelsea he had unlimited money to work with and did a much better job of it than Hughes did. At Inter he’s taken over a team that was already champions and has maintained that, allowing them to get weaker if anything as now their title rivals are closer to them than they were when he took over. Mourinho’s reputation is not mainly for his achievements but for himself and the character he brings and it leads to the man being overrated as a manager.
I’m sure that Mourinho will return to the Premiership one day but it’s unclear as to who exactly he will manage. Return to Chelsea maybe? Or would he replace Ferguson? Those seem the most likely but would he succeed in those roles? It’s hard to tell, with Mourinho we’re living off the glories he tells us of rather than what’s been achieved and sometimes sensibility is more important than showmanship.
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Are you delusional?
“Mourinho excelled with Porto but even he admitted that he cheated to achieve what they did.”
What do you smoke? Must be a very potent weed…
And… “At Inter he’s taken over a team that was already champions and has maintained that, allowing them to get weaker if anything as now their title rivals are closer to them than they were when he took over.”
Surely you must have started watching Serie-A after Mourinho joined Inter or else you would have known that the last title Inter won under Mancini was achieved on the last day of the season.
And the previous two titles were acieved either by default or lack of competition.
But whats the use of trying to reason with someone like you….You probably have your head so far up your arse that you won’t even read my comments.
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ADA; Mancini’s last season with Inter was poor in terms of dominance, granted but their previous successes had been by large amounts of points – and I suppose you don’t consider AC Milan and Roma as genuine title contenders to Inter and the other big teams not good enough if you say there was no competition?
I would recommend reading Mourinho’s autobiography where he readily admits that his European successes with Porto were helped by his actually cheating to help his team, there was a media storm at the time of publishing – perhaps you weren’t around
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What a joke. It sounds like you’re talking about Ferguson here. Probably the worst sportsman in football history and has ‘cheated’ every season with his rants about every ref not cheating for his team. Additionally you could argue his league wins were due to outspending teams year after year until Arsene Wenger came along, or Mourinho, or even Dalglish spending Jack Wlakers millions.
Are you saying the league never needed Fergie?
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ADA look up default in the dictionary you plank and also check out the points margin between Inter and AC Milan in the past few seasons, an AC Milan team that during that period won the Champions League and you’ll see how good Inter were. 97 points in a single season is fantastic no matter what way you try and twist it. Don’t believe the anti-Inter hype, they have been an excellent side under Mancini and Jose has sustained.
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AC Milan haven’t been a factor in the league for a while. But Mark is right Inter have been head and shoulders above every other club since the Serie match fixing scandal where Juve were the team to beat with or without reffing decision.
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This is stupidly biased against Mourinho. At Porto, he won 2 league titles, the UEFA cup and the CL. There’s only so much ‘cheating’ someone can do to be serial overachievers!!!
At Chelsea, yes he had money, but look at Real Madrid. Their galactico policy proved largely unsuccessful from 2003 onwards, and even now after their splashout, are not guaranteed to win La Liga!! Money helps, but it takes a strong character to make that money work….
Then there’s Inter. Under Mancini, 1st title handed to them because of the match fixing scandel, 2nd title was won when their rivals had lost all their best players because of the scandel….with Ibrahimovic and Vieira going to inter, and the 3rd, Inter scraped it on the last day of the season.
Mourinho’s time at Inter have seen their rivals close the gap from the scandel, and it’s testament to his work that has kept Inter solidly ahead of the pack!
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this is ridiculous, mourinho is a superb manager, leaving out his success with chelsea and inter and porto, he virtually created the chelsea team that was a posts width away from lifting the european cup, and the same team that almost beat one of the best barca sides ever, while his cult of personality sometimes overcomes other’s objectivness you cant doubt his managerial skills.
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