Anyone who watches the three-part Netflix documentary about Jose Mourinho (already brilliantly summarized by John Carlin last week) could compare the character to a wolf. Sharp claws, supreme intelligence, and a high sensory capacity to know what is happening at every moment and sniff out the path. There is a scene where the man from Setúbal shows it. He points to his eyes and says they are his best tool, like that Big Brother who sees everything in a football match, inside a locker room or in the club’s offices. He doesn’t care whether to hunt by day or night. His instinct rules.
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He demonstrated it at Porto and Inter, teams he made European champions; also at Chelsea, a high-pressure setting that he balanced with two Premier League titles, and, of course, in his first stint at Real Madrid. Here divergences were (and are) generated. For some, Mourinho won very little and angered too much; for others, including Florentino Pérez, he laid the foundations of discipline and competitiveness that Carlo Ancelotti and Zinédine Zidane later took advantage of to win six Champions. That is why he has returned.
The character, to be a good wolf, also seems solitary (his children and wife live in London), lost in his labyrinthine and obsessive mind; always, with an escape. In love with his profession and his image, he acts against the current. The special one.
Be that as it may, his influence during his three years in Madrid, Mourinho has a clear Machiavellian premise: the end justifies any means. “When I enter a tunnel of locker rooms I no longer think about those I love,” he said. That is why he turned the Madrid locker room into a hunt for a mole leaking a lineup, received a complaint from the Chelsea doctor for shouting at her vehemently in public, or poked the eye of the ill-fated Tito Vilanova. “Regretting is useless. What’s done is done.”
Now, however, it seems there is a 2.0 version of the Portuguese. That lamb’s skin hides what he called his DNA, that immutable temperament that now remains dormant because the “players protect me.” And there lies the winning tactic of the superior being, paraphrasing Emilio Butragueño, who is now more Mourinho than Florentino at Real Madrid: the footballers above all, as protagonists of the good and the bad, because “Arbeloa and Xabi Alonso took the fall.” He already prepared the ground in case that saying that second parts were not good comes true.
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The first image of Mourinho was the friendly interview by Josep Pedrerol on El Chiringuito, where that comparison to the animal kingdom can be drawn.
The lamb appeared to announce the new habits established in Valdebebas. In a kind tone, Mourinho spoke of “common sense” when he emphasized that players must arrive an hour early to training, have breakfast and lunch together, listen to the nutritionist, go to the gym… And he said it in such a pedagogical and paternal tone that, beneath the skin of his words, he left the squad exposed. It was like telling a mechanic to bring tools to work. And then the wolf appeared. “The aggressive Mourinho hasn’t come out, the players’ behavior is impeccable.”
The second aspect was to praise those footballers who were in the spotlight last season. About Mbappé he said he makes him “laugh in training because of how good he is,” that he is even “too much.” And he gave Vinícius a hand by taking his side in his usual refereeing crusade. “They don’t respect him,” he concluded. How to go against a coach who protects you like that? John Terry already said it: “He makes you feel so important and creates such strong bonds that you would die for him.” Mourinho has already started putting the sheep into the fold. “Here the players are good, very good or very very good,” he summarized. Unity above any tactic. And that also draws attention, because the Portuguese could boast of being an innovator (he was one of the first to use Vitor Frade’s tactical periodization), but he prefers to tell football from the emotional side.
Mourinho, who measures every word, in the documentary resembles a kind of Robert de Niro who tells his volcanic trajectory, a tough and winning guy, although now, that is, he sees everything calmly like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. With better humor, for now, because Mourinho is still a wolf even though he started the season with lamb’s skin. Eat or win. The verb doesn’t matter.
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