The Chelsea boss returns to the city where he made his name, but how much has his style - and persona - changed since, from shades of Catenaccio at Inter to goals galore in Spain
A little older, a little grumpier, a little greyer; when Jose Mourinho returns to the Estadio do Dragao touchline on Tuesday, he will carry little of the suaveness and cocksure bravado that his younger self displayed with such exuberance and which catapulted him into the spotlight over a decade ago. The rebellious upstart from Porto is now part of the establishment, his vanguard tactics and techniques now part of every manager’s handbook, his aura a little less… special.
Asked how he has changed since those fairy tale days in Oporto, he replies, with a customary wry smile, “I have more titles, more money and even more desire to win than I had before.” But the curse of a third season he never had to endure at Porto has hit Mourinho and his Chelsea side hard. Three defeats, 14 goals conceded, 15th in the table and, for a rare time in his career, he no longer feels untouchable. In fact, he appears positively rattled.
This is the biggest crisis Mourinho has ever had to endure, but going back to where it all began could be a blessing. If ever there was a time that the 52-year-old needed to reconnect with his early career magic, it is now.
He has cut an increasingly worn and fraught silhouette on the sidelines, more picture of Dorian Gray than the man himself now, the flare-collared macs that could have come out of a Noir thriller replaced by the comfort and warmth of fleeces and gilets. His shtick – the histrionics, media performances and outright electricity – has been taken on and amplified by others. He isn’t quite the box office entertainer he once was.
Recent Champions League defeats have seen Mourinho beaten by the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Diego Simeone, larger than life characters cut from the same cloth as the man who made controversy into an art form – yet against whom he now looks a little bland. Even Julen Lopetegui, his opposite number on Tuesday night, has lit up the touchline, squaring off with firebrand manager Jorge Jesus after drawing with Benfica at the end of last season.
All this, coupled with a title run-in last season that was built on prosaic resolve and mind-numbing solidity as Chelsea ground their way to glory, has reinforced the idea of Mourinho becoming duller and more dour. Even with the title sewn up, he would not take off the handbrake (to borrow a phrase from arch nemesis Arsene Wenger). But it wasn’t always this way.
His first great side sparkled. “Porto was a team of kids, where the coach was also a kid,” he says looking back. The team romped to the title as top scorers with +47 and +44 goal difference in each campaign, while in Europe they were often explosive and entertaining, notably against Monaco in the Champions League final having already delivered a masterclasses against Lyon – had Madrid not made such a mess of winning la Decima in the noughties, les Gones might have gone down as the decade’s greatest underperformer.
Yet Mourinho’s Porto are widely and wrongly remembered as a negative side. Perhaps his greatest burden is that his most spectacular and decisive performances are often his most defensive and those peaks are then used to define the rest of his career. Victory over Manchester United in 2004, for example, is often seen in an unflattering light, not least because of the amateur dramatics on show, but the Portuguese side out-thought their loftier opponents and even bossed possession at Old Trafford.
The enduring image from that match was Mourinho’s touchline sprint – compare that to his groggy walk along the Anfield turf last year, unshaven and emitting a waft of bitterness – and just a few months later that force of personality would consume Chelsea. When he arrived at Porto he told the players in their first training session that they would be champions. He delivered the same message even earlier in west London, when he proclaimed himself as ‘the Special One’.
He immediately marked himself out as a man on an unstoppable ascent, and he was going to drag everyone else along with him by the sheer power of his charisma and confidence alone. Those early months in England made a strong first impression, not only of the man, but also of the manager.
Chelsea started the season solidly and cautiously – it was not until their 10th game of the 2004-05 season that they scored more than twice in a match. Mourinho describes that period as one of adjustment. He wanted to install two things: firstly, a clear winning mentality. As at Porto, he told the players they could beat anyone, but with the Blues he also wanted to install the belief that they could thwart any side too. Not losing was as important as winning.
But that required something else: a greater tactical understanding. He introduced the three-man midfield that had been so successful en route to European glory, with Claude Makelele sitting, which routinely gave his side a numerical advantage in the middle of the pitch at a time when the Premier League was almost wholly 4-4-2-centric. His team learnt to control games, they learned how not to lose, and they grew in confidence.
One defeat, 15 goals conceded and 25 clean sheets – both records – tells one story. A greater goals-per-game rate than the Invincibles after that initial adjustment period, and after Damien Duff, Arjen Robben and Joe Cole had all been let off the leash (the system even tinkered with to accommodate them), plus a cumulative goal difference of +107 over two seasons, tells an entirely different story. But first impressions are hard to shake.
Clashes with Barcelona have also helped to repeatedly shape Mourinho’s image. At Chelsea there was the controversy of his allegations against Frank Rijkaard, which ultimately resulted in a ban for the Portuguese. But with Inter a couple of years later he executed his greatest-ever masterplan, the most astonishing defensive display he has ever overseen and his proudest moment as 10 men kept arguably the greatest club side at bay for 60 minutes at Camp Nou.
“Most teams don’t know how to play against Barcelona,” Mourinho said of his out-witting of Pep Guardiola. “To play against a big team like Barcelona you have to know exactly the qualities they have and exactly what you have to do.” Again this reinforces the idea of a manager prepared to do anything that is necessary, and who is foremost concerned with stopping the other team.
But when he moved to Real Madrid, he tried to play the Catalans at their own game. In his first Clasico, his side were obliterated 5-0 and their high defensive line was repeatedly exposed. Not that this was the first time he had tried such a tactic; far from parking the bus every week, he had deployed an aggressive back four ever since Porto to catch opponents offside. Even with Inter in the Champions League in 2010, they caught teams offside 58 times (45% more than the next best side).
That attacking outlook eventually paid off as Madrid set countless records in the 2011-12 campaign. Now armed with one of football’s two great superstars, Mourinho swept all before him to score 121 Liga goals, record a goal difference of +89 and break the 100-point barrier. Negative? No. Defensive? Not in the slightest. Madrid were outrageously good fun, which brings us back to how Mourinho has changed over the last decade.
Some may think he hasn’t, that he remains the paradoxical mix of a dull pragmatist on the pitch but an attention-seeking provocateur off it. Some may see a manager who briefly flirted with a more attack-minded style only when he had Cristiano Ronaldo on hand to score 60 goals in a single season. Or some may see the most adaptable manager in the history of the sport.
Because that is what Mourinho is and always has been. Not only adapting to opponents, but adapting to clubs. He was a livewire at Porto, a pioneer at Chelsea, a rock at Inter, an entertainer in Madrid and a master last season, keeping his head as all around lost theirs. The constant has always been a willingness to change.
Now, though, he must show that he can also adapt his persona. There is an insult flung at Mad Men’s Don Draper, though not entirely fair, that feels just a little true of Mourinho, too: “You don’t have any character. You're just handsome!” Without the youthful good looks and knowing winks, his barbs now come across as grouchy, irritable and even mean, while the siege mentality has less effect when you're no longer a plucky underdog. Perhaps it is time to shed that image at the stadium where it was crafted and embrace what he has come to be: the upstart no more, but an elder statesman, a man for all seasons.
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