The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho (17 page)

Lass loved football. It is not known what he did during this time; the only thing he told his friends was that he did not get much sleep. He stayed up late to watch all the games of the Copa América that was being played in Argentina. He remained unreachable until one day he turned up at Valdebebas. It was midsummer and he found the training complex deserted; the only people around were some maintenance staff, and Pedro León and Drenthe doing laps of the training pitches without the ball. The balls, they said, were under lock and key by order of Mourinho.

Mourinho knows better than any coach that there is nothing that annoys a player more than being denied contact with the ball. Indeed, in his own training programmes there are no exercises that don’t involve the ball. What he had done upset Lass so much that he called the club and told them exactly what he thought. His insistence was so great that the staff at Valdebebas eventually gave the balls to the players. What had happened was so unusual that the Sports Association of Spain sent an inspection team to the club to look into it.

If those who stayed behind had a miserable time, those who went on the trip to California did not fare much better. Madrid’s pre-season at the UCLA campus did not go smoothly. The support employees accompanying the team claimed the atmosphere was ‘suffocating’. Mourinho was obsessed with the idea of starting the season by defeating Barcelona in the Super Cup and had brought his squad together a week before Guardiola’s team came back from their holidays. He was convinced that if Madrid won the Super Cup he could renew the protest he had made in the semi-finals of the Champions League. His first step was announcing that if his players beat Barça they would thereby demonstrate to the world the truth of everything he had said about the conspiracy hatched by UEFA and its referees to destroy Madrid; and that if they were capable of beating the best club in Europe they would make it manifestly clear that nobody other than Madrid should have won the Champions League at Wembley.

Mourinho was constantly agitated. He did not like the pitches at the UCLA. He said that the colour of the grass was not right and ordered the pitches to be returfed, costing Madrid thousands of dollars. He did not like the food, either. At the beginning of the previous pre-season, relying on his famously critical palate, he had tasted each dish the chefs served then sacked the lot of them. He behaved as if he were a gourmet. The food seemed delicious to the players, but Mourinho found fault with everything and suggested changes to the way it was cooked.

He focused his attention on the hot-plates, on the grass, on the politics of agitation and propaganda, and finally on the captaincy. He began to seriously consider taking the captaincy away from Casillas and giving it to an outfield player, although doing so would go against the club’s tradition that the armband should go to the most senior member of the team. Among his assistants, Mourinho defended his position with sporting arguments, saying that there were certain decisive moments when a goalkeeper could not act like an outfield player, such as communicating with the strikers or complaining to the referee. For the role of captain Mourinho first considered Ramos, Ronaldo and, above all, Pepe. Ramos was Pérez’s favourite. Ronaldo treated the idea with contempt and refused the offer. Pepe was Mourinho’s preferred choice because of his docility. Neither Casillas nor Ramos had shown themselves to be very flexible in terms of taking on board Mourinho’s suggestions, and the coach wanted someone who would act as his mouthpiece. Someone completely loyal, who would never question him. And, if possible, someone who was not a Spanish international. Since his arrival at Madrid he explained to his assistants that he did not trust those players who had just won the World Cup because he found them lacking in ambition and the requisite nervous tension. The commotion over the captaincy did not result in anything more than a growing climate of mistrust between Casillas and the coach, who began treating his goalkeeper with indifference, dealing instead with Alonso, Pepe and Ramos.

The journalist Santiago Segurola, match reporter for
El País
during the 1998 World Cup, coined the neologism ‘
trivote
’ to define the concept Cesare Maldini had introduced to the Italian midfield. Dino Baggio, Di Biagio and Pesotto constituted the
trivote
. The only thing different from the double pivot first seen in Spain in the 50s with Maguregui and Mauri was the addition of a third defensive midfielder. The result was a stiffening of the midfield – one that lessened creativity, tending to leave no room for players who operated just behind the striker – and a narrowing of the formation, all serving a single purpose: defending deep in numbers and attacking on the break. The term ‘
trivote
’ became part of everyday football-speak in Spain. The Madrid players used it every day to describe what Mourinho had implemented in April against Barcelona. In the summer of 2011, when they explained the tactics the manager had prepared at UCLA, they again referred to the
trivote
. The new version, it seemed, would feature Khedira, Alonso and Coentrão.

Mourinho was so keen to have a strong, athletic and flexible holding midfielder in his team that he could not stop thinking about Lass. Even though he knew that the Frenchman had disowned him, he did not stop sending him texts asking him to stay at Madrid. The player returned one of the messages in front of his friends, one of whom read the exchange and related it in the following terms:

‘Get out of my life and leave me in peace …’

‘You should know that I’m not going to sell you for less than €20 million. Get back into the pre-season and you’ll play.’

‘Let your mother go to the pre-season.’

‘I’m going to send you to Castilla.’ [Castilla are the club’s second team, who play in the second division.]

‘OK, well, I’ll earn the €9 million that they owe me and wait in Castilla until I’m a free agent …’

‘You won’t be able to stand it in Castilla. After three months you’ll return with me to compete …’

‘I won’t be able to stand it? You forget that at Chelsea I didn’t play for so long that you had to transfer me to Arsenal. And I was 20 years old. Imagine what I am capable of doing now that I’m 26.’

Mourinho’s bad mood accompanied him to the training ground. To his assistants he insisted that the squad were missing certain qualities. In front of the players he appeared more weighed down, more demanding, more inflexible in his principles. The idea that the only important thing in football was to win, and that taking the greatest defensive precautions, with fewer concessions than ever to attacking licence and elaboration, formed the core of his sermons.

If in the summer of 2010 he practised on the basis of a 4-2-3-1 formation, 4-3-2-1 prevailed in 2011. To instruct his players in this new formation Mourinho forced natural wingers such as Di María and Coentrão to play as defensive midfielders, escorting Khedira and Alonso. During the friendlies he came up with
trivotes
and
pivotes
(two defensive midfielders) of all kinds: Khedira, Alonso and Coentrão; Coentrão, Alonso and Pepe; Alonso and Coentrão; Khedira and Coentrão; and Granero and Coentrão.

Mourinho’s concern for picking Coentrão in any position other than at left-back, laid bare to the players his desire to justify a signing that had led to so many doubts. The fact that on the pre-season tour he had gone out of his way to show affection towards Pepe, Di Maria and Coentrao, did nothing to lessen suspicions. The majority of the squad believed that his favouritism towards these players was not based wholly on footballing reasons but also on his friendship with Jorge Mendes. These were not the only questions that arose among the squad. In the team-talks the players began to cast doubt on some of the technical observations of their manager.

The first leg of the Super Cup was played in the Bernabéu on 14 August 2011. Considering both sides’ lack of preparation it turned out to be a great game. There were notable absentees in the team sent out by Guardiola. Barcelona started with Valdes, Alves, Mascherano, Abidal, Adriano, Thiago, Keita, Iniesta, Alexis, Messi and Villa. Madrid, who had had one more week of pre-season, were able to field their strongest side: Casillas, Ramos, Pepe, Carvalho, Marcelo, Di María, Khedira, Alonso, Benzema, Özil and Ronaldo.

A superb move involving Benzema and Özil gave Madrid a 1–0 lead after they had made an irrepressible start. The words that Mourinho had used in April remained the same in August. He had insisted on the word ‘hard’ to describe the way he wanted his players to go into challenges, reassuring them that Spanish referees did not dare give red cards to Madrid players. Sending them out to press using high-block for throw-ins and goal-kicks, he warned that if Barcelona played more than three passes then they had to get back quickly. As Barcelona were struggling to put even two passes together, Alonso and Khedira were able to move 20 yards forward, closer to the fully switched-on Madrid forward line. From the touchline Mourinho looked on with silent approval.

Before the game he had told his players, regardless of where on the pitch they won possession from Barcelona, to finish off their attacking move as quickly as possible. This hurried Madrid’s play. No backward or sideways balls, and at the slightest hesitation the moves would be channelled to the wings and end in crosses. But Madrid’s vertigo suddenly went with the 1–0. Realising he should make the most of the advantage, Mourinho ordered the retreat, and Madrid went from chaotic attacks to sitting deep and waiting. Goals from Villa and Messi were the consequence. Only a shot from Alonso on the hour brought the scores back level at 2–2. Mourinho’s reaction was immediate. He put Coentrão on for Di María, forming what he had spent so much time practising in Los Angeles: the
trivote
. The measure at least served to protect Casillas’s goal. But Madrid no longer had control of the game.

Every minute that Coentrão played in midfield revealed more and more of his ineptitude. If he did not receive the ball, he lost his position on the right wing; he was not able to lose his marker nor was he capable of making diagonal runs on goal. As a midfielder, and as part of the
trivote
, he had great difficulty making space for himself to receive the ball – or he was simply trying to hide every time that his team got possession of it – and the central defenders never found him in a position to give him the ball. Physically, he was best suited to the left wing. He was a willing marker, but what he was most happy doing was going past the full-back and crossing, or arriving in the area himself. He had vision and a good change of pace, but he was a long way from being able to replace Ronaldo in that position, at least not without anyone noticing the marked difference between the two.

The return leg on 17 August was probably the most dramatic
clásico
of all these years. In his eagerness to play Coentrão, and persuaded that the team lacked stability in other areas, Mourinho did exactly what he had managed to avoid doing during the seven friendlies in the pre-season: he put him at left-back, the only position in the team where he could play to a certain level. This was Marcelo’s position; the Brazilian was dropped to the bench, humiliated, and spent the first half passing caustic comment on his boss. A substitute on the bench at the time summed up the feeling of an increasingly influential part of the dressing room with the following remark as he watched Pepe, Carvalho, Coentrão, Di María and Ronaldo:

‘Five Jorge Mendes players on the pitch. What he wants to do is play an “eleven” made up of Mendes players!’

For the second half Mourinho reorganised his team to re-establish the
trivote
. He brought on Marcelo at left-back and moved Coentrão into midfield. The deciding goal, giving a 3–2 victory to Barcelona, started with a piece of skill from Messi in the zone that Coentrão should have been patrolling. Messi received the ball on the right side of midfield, played a pass out to Adriano and scored from the return pass. The Madrid players blamed Coentrão for the delay in closing down Messi and then for not cutting out the ball from Adriano.

Just before the end of the game, Marcelo, still annoyed at not having started, kicked Cesc Fàbregas in front of the bench. There were protests from everyone: Madrid called for action to be taken against the alleged play-acting of Fàbregas, and Barcelona wanted Marcelo to be punished for his violent play. In the middle of the melée, involving substitutes, employees and coaches from both clubs, Mourinho slipped into the Barcelona technical area. He was followed by his bodyguard, a young man, shaven-headed and well built, squeezed into a white shirt, who never left him before, during and immediately after games.

On seeing Guardiola’s assistant Tito Vilanova with his back to him, the Madrid manager moved in from behind and poked his index finger into Vilanova’s eye before quickly retreating. When Vilanova turned he could only stretch out his arm and slap Mourinho in the back of the neck. The bodyguard stepped in, preventing Vilanova from advancing any further. The next day, Madrid’s lawyers sent videos of the incident to the Competition Committee in an attempt to show that the occupants of the Barcelona bench had provoked Madrid. In the video images it is difficult to distinguish anything out of the ordinary. The only judge, Alfredo Florez, a regular in the directors’ box at the Bernabéu, gave Mourinho a two-match ban and Vilanova a one-match suspension. As far as Guardiola was concerned, the evidence showed that Madrid had positioned themselves carefully with respect to the regulating body of Spanish football.

Mourinho told his players that if Barça won the Super Cup they should not remain on the pitch for the presentation of the trophy, so they retired discreetly to the dressing room. Casillas got caught up in the collective hysteria, and told Fàbregas exactly what he thought about his ‘simulation’. Xavi could not persuade him that he was wrong, and both captains argued until they had to be separated. There were no congratulations. It was a turning point for the captain. When Casillas saw the footage later on at home, not only did he discover that Fàbregas had in fact been hit hard by Marcelo. He also suspected that he himself had crossed the line into the ridiculous, and that he was compromising his prestige in a crusade that was neither his nor his club’s, in a childish war that undermined the unity of the Spanish national side – those ties of complicity, those shared emotions, those friendships that had taken such a long time to forge. He felt his own identity as a player and as a person might be irreversibly stained if he did not act straight away.