The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho (18 page)

Casillas decided to call Xavi and Puyol to apologise for what had happened over the last few months. He asked for their forgiveness, admitting that he had made a mistake, and he did it publicly so that all the supporters were aware of his position. An act of unprecedented grandeur, it took great courage. How many times has one of the game’s giants apologised in front of the whole world? The initiative caught both Mourinho and Pérez by surprise. The coach saw it as a challenge to dressing-room unity and his principles. If until that point Casillas and Mourinho had maintained a civilised dialogue, from that moment on their relationship became one skirmish after another.

Pérez’s, who as always had to manage a crisis with Mourinho in the middle of it, was ambivalent. He told his friends that Mourinho always did the opposite of whatever it was he asked him, and for that reason he had to be treated with extreme subtlety. As for the finger in the eye of Vilanova, he told the manager to do what he wanted but he recommended a public act of contrition. The response from Mourinho, one week after the events, was to issue a threat on Madrid’s headed note paper. The statement, with messianic overtones, included a new term: ‘
pseudomadridistas
’. In this way, the manager was positioning himself as the Grand Inquisitor of Real Madrid, pointing the finger at those who confessed to be
Madridistas
but who did not share his way of working:

‘I have a fantastic president, who is very intelligent and with whom I have a great friendship. I also have a director general who works 24 hours a day. Because of the way I feel, I believe that my motivation is enormous and my
Madridismo
is much larger than certain
pseudomadridistas
.

‘I want to directly address myself towards the Madrid family to apologise to it, and only to it, for my attitude in the last game. Some are better adapted to the hypocrisy of football, they do it with their faces hidden, with their mouths covered and in the depth of the tunnels.

‘I didn’t learn to be a hypocrite. I didn’t learn it and I don’t want learn it.

‘An embrace to everyone, and we’ll see each other tomorrow in the Santiago Bernabéu.’

Madrid hosted Galatasaray for the Bernabéu Trophy on 24 August. More than an exhibition match and a friendly, this was a demonstration of extent of Mourinho’s power. The stadium was covered in banners of support. In the ring of the highest stand of the Castellana side of the ground, directly in front of the directors’ box, somebody had draped a significant banner:
‘Mou, tu dedo nos señala el camino’
(‘Mou, your finger shows us the way’). It was signed by the supporters’ club of La Clásica, it was 100 feet long and had clearly been factory made. The club saw no reason to take it down.

In the 84th minute, Mourinho made a significant change: he took off Marcelo and put on Pedro Mendes. This young, right-sided central defender, an Under-21 with Portugal, had arrived on a free from Swiss team Servette to play for Castilla. His agent was Jorge Mendes and his new coach clearly thought highly of him, immediately inviting him to train with the first team. Mourinho then gave him his first-team debut in the Bernabéu Trophy and, finally, he included him in the club’s Champions League squad. It was a lot of hype for an unknown player whose qualities did not make him stand out from any of the other young players at the club. His team-mates in Castilla did not take very long to nickname him ‘
El Enchufado
’ (‘The Connected One’).

On the bench sat Casillas. The goalkeeper did not play so much as a minute in an exhibition match in which all his team-mates played a part. He knew he was being punished. Inside the dressing room he put on a calm face; he was ready to embark on a long journey. He told the team-mates closest to him that he could no longer bear the situation, that he had never believed in the non-football practices of the coach but even so, for the sake of the club, he had done his best to carry them out. In time, he confessed, he had come to realise that this role was not for him. He felt like an impostor. Mourinho, Casillas said, aside from being a bad person, had generated an intolerable division in the squad by creating what appeared to be a group of protected players connected to Jorge Mendes. He added that he knew that the manager had been outraged because he had tried to restore some harmony with Barcelona by calling Puyol and Xavi, but that they had not exchanged so much as a word about it. To conclude, he argued that it did not serve the club’s interests to continue systematically reproducing what Mourinho called his ‘communication strategy’, and showed himself to be as decisive as former Spanish national team boss Camacho:

‘I’ve got the balls not to do it!’

It is said in Valdebebas that it was Casillas who sought out Mourinho to clarify his position. He said he had to admit that they could not stand each other, that the feeling was one of mutual rejection, and that there was no need to pretend. Casillas told Mourinho that on the pitch he would give everything, but that off the pitch he wanted to avoid any complicity that went beyond what was absolutely necessary.

Mourinho was not able to hide his displeasure in the team-talk before the first game of the season, at La Romareda. Profoundly frustrated, the coach said that the unity of the group was the supreme value. He said that everyone had to go in the same direction, and he launched a coded message against Casillas and those who felt dislocated from the group, accusing them of undermining the general interests of the team. When he had finished, Casillas took him to one side and asked him exactly what he had meant by ‘everyone going in the same direction’, and if perhaps it did not rather consist in working for the particular interests of Mourinho. Because, he pointed out, what interested Madrid was one thing, and what interested its coach was another. Casillas also invited him not to use what they had talked about in private to discredit him later in front of his team-mates. He said this as if it were a threat, because he was still prepared to support his team-mates. The one who he would no longer speak up for was him: Mourinho and his many interests.

The contrast between the devotion shown by Mourinho for providing security to Di María and his disdain for Özil and Kaká – as well as his dedication to Coentrão, his indifference towards Marcelo, and his penchant for praising Pepe and criticising Ramos – led to a feeling of discrimination descending over a significant part of the squad. The trouble was not that Mourinho chose one group over the other. The trouble was that there seemed no way to reverse the footballing status quo. The players who supported Mourinho were invariably represented by Mendes, all lived near each other in the suburb of La Finca and ate together. They formed a solid core. And, unlike the others, they had easy access to information from Mourinho. They heard of his strategies directly or through Mendes, telling them what lay behind his decisions and comforting them when they were not playing. No one explained to Marcelo his overall role in the plan, let alone encouraged him when he was dropped to the bench. This dramatically contrasted with his treatment of Coentrão, whom the manager took out of the first team for six matches, claiming physical problems that were, according to Valdebebas employees, non-existent. Mourinho took him away to protect him from the press and the suspicions of his own team-mates; at the same time, he promised him that he could rest assured he would play in the big games when the season reached its climax.

In criminal law, rebellion is a crime against public order. In a football dressing room, a revolt is an attempt to force a change in the customs or the unwritten rules. There are coaches who listen to the players and avoid these conflicts, trying to establish common ground between the warring factions. During his first year in Madrid Mourinho did not listen. He talked so long and so vehemently, and accumulated so much power, that his players were scared to interrupt, hoping that, in exchange for silence and obedience, their coach would give them the security he had promised. When they began to suspect that they would not enjoy that security, and realising that the obedience and silence of all only meant more arbitrary powers being given the boss, the nuts of the Madrid machine began to loosen. The revolt began in September 2011, almost a year before Madrid won the league. For some employees of the club, and for many players, if the squad had not raised its voice, if it had not made demands, if it had not tried to limit the autocratic behaviour of the coach, winning the league would have been impossible. Nevertheless, Mourinho’s virtue was that, like many other successful coaches, he had it in him to be able to listen and compromise. At least for a few months, Mourinho did not do everything he would have liked to have done. At the same time the team competed at a very high level.

It took only one spark, however, for the insubordination to explode. It was 18 September 2011, away to Levante, a ground that always tested the nerves of Mourinho and his players. Di María was lying on the ground, exaggerating the effects of a challenge, and Ballesteros leaned over him to say something when he was pushed off balance by Khedira falling down in front of the linesman. Ballesteros went down like a sack of rocks and Khedira was sent off. Real lost 1–0, and in the press conference after the match Mourinho blamed his German midfielder for the defeat.

Considered by his team-mates to be one of the manager’s men, Sami Khedira knew very well how to distinguish between professional loyalty and being in league with someone. He was a serious individual. When the majority felt they had to laugh at the boss’s jokes, the German remained unmoved. Although he did not make unnecessary concessions, he was inevitably obedient. Up until these last few months his impenetrable character cloaked any insecurities very well. On that trip to Valencia, however, he owned up to a concern that had haunted him since the pre-season, when he saw that the coach had toyed with the idea of putting Coentrão in his place.

Before the match, and in anticipation of the sort of tactics that Levante would deploy, Mourinho told his players to go up to the referee and encourage him to show cards to the opposition. He also told them to ‘defend their team-mates’ when they were under attack. What did ‘defend’ mean when the ball was not in play? Each interpreted this in their own way. Khedira had dutifully done what was asked of him. Seeing that Di María was getting bothered by Ballesteros, he defended him.

Mourinho’s reaction came as a surprise to the squad. The coach had spent a year presenting himself as the champion and guardian of his players. He had assured them that he would allow himself to be exposed to public pressure in order to preserve them from external criticism, no matter what happened. Then suddenly, after a defeat, he publicly pointed the finger at one of his most loyal men to take away his own share of the blame. A sense of danger, of helplessness, became all too clear over the course of the next few days. The team was at breaking point. When Ramos demanded an explanation from the manager, in the next match against Racing Santander in the Sardinero on 21 September, three days after the trip to the east, he was dropped from the starting line-up by the coach. Madrid drew 0–0.

Toño, the Racing goalkeeper, did not have a save to make all night. The match – Madrid’s most anaemic of those three years – left Madrid a point behind Barcelona. A degree of anxiety was detected in Mourinho, followed by a gesture of utter helplessness in front of his players. According to two witnesses, the coach begged for an answer, as if he were completely unaware what the cause of the whole situation was:

‘What’s the matter with you all?’

‘What’s wrong with
you
?’ they replied. ‘Why are there some of us that you don’t even talk to? Why do a lot of us not even exist as far as you’re concerned? Why are the errors of some unforgivable and the errors of others ignored? We all want to be in this together.’

Having become accustomed to giving uninterrupted monologues over the course of the last year, Mourinho was startled that his subordinates were now speaking up. He was, however, prepared to listen to this, the first angry opposition he had encountered at the club. Casillas, Ramos, Arbeloa and Higuaín were the most vehement of those present. They laid before him the long list of grievances shared among the squad. Complaints about the favouritism with which he treated those in the group who were either directly or indirectly related to his agent were high on the agenda. They also asked him not to discuss his players’ errors in public, as he had done with Khedira in Valencia. In the face of these protests, Mourinho offered up a ‘scientific’ justification of his behaviour:

‘It’s a psychological tactic. I do it to get more out of you.’

He told them he would stop systematically denouncing referees, and that never again would he ask his team not to attempt a comeback, as he had in his 1 May team-talk ahead of the return leg of the Champions League semi-final that they lost against Barça. The players said that from now on they would try to win every game, and would stop thinking about blaming referees or building off-the-pitch communication strategies:

‘We’re not going to go out and play a game just to prepare for a press conference where you can complain about referees.’

Pérez was so alarmed at what he saw taking place on the pitch that he had gone down to the dressing room to try to find out what was happening. Eventually, the president backed Ramos but also encouraged him – for the sake of a diplomatic outcome – to assume the role of mediator between the players and the manager that had previously been taken by Casillas. Ramos promised Mourinho he would give everything on the pitch if his coach put his faith in him. He assured him that he would be able to lead the team from the heart of the defence, where he could be more influential. From then on, Ramos played in the centre and returned to full-back only in cases of emergency.

A barbecue in Valdebebas put an end to the disagreements and inaugurated a new era. Everyone had their photos taken and toasted a new commitment to peace and unity. The atmosphere was festive, the players laughed enthusiastically in front of the camera and only the subdued look on the coach’s face hinted that the harmony was perhaps not universal. Seated at a table in front of a few plates of left-over pork and beef, the man who a month ago had been at the height of his power and influence, realised he now had a problem.