The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho (22 page)

The game against Villarreal finally brought the
trivote
to a noisy end, at least in its purest form, the mechanism suffering a sort of implosion. Lass, the most irreplaceable part in its make-up, had come on and kicked so many people that his team-mates believed he wanted to get into trouble. The referee showed him a yellow card and, feeling that the player was trying to get himself sent off, Mourinho took him off after 29 minutes, replacing him with Callejón. The Frenchman went straight to the shower, changed, put on his headphones and listened to some hip-hop. He looked so proud of himself that the coach was left dumbfounded.

Nobody could say that Lass’s behaviour took his boss by surprise. Here was a player who was so obsessed with the game that he could not bear sitting on the subs’ bench. Nor was he capable of remaining indifferent towards a coach who on the one hand flattered him and on the other denied him any time on the pitch. He did not want to play for Mourinho for another season, something he had by now repeated time and again for almost a year. He challenged Mourinho to fire him on the grounds that he thought of himself as a captive. One day in February, upset because he was not in the side, he found his way into Mourinho’s office and railed at him while his boss remained silent:

‘You’re a traitor. Forget about me. You live your life and I’ll live mine. I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m sick of you.’

For a month between February and March Lass did not return to the first-team squad. Officially, the club claimed that he was injured. The reality was that he detested his coach, but Mourinho appreciated him as a player to such an extent that, until very late in the season, he did all he could to avoid losing him. The other players saw the situation as peculiarly comic.

‘We all knew that he loved him,’ said one of them, ‘and that because he loved him he would end up playing him sooner or later. Most people love the model Gisele Bündchen – but he loves Lass Diarra, and he will end up forgiving him because of that love. It was unrequited, but unflinching.’

The romance finally came to an end at Villarreal. Although Mourinho was tempted to give him back his first-team place at the start of the following season, in September 2012 Lass signed for Anzhi and went to live in Moscow, doubling his wages.

After having been sent off, Mourinho bounded around the El Madrigal dressing room in the animated state that always accompanied his dismissal. The idea of Barça being just six points behind put him on edge. He called his players together to tell them that it was obvious that referees were stealing the league from them, begging that the players come out and denounce them to journalists. Headed by Casillas and Ramos, the majority of the squad refused. Not even Pepe – nor Ronaldo – agreed to go against their colleagues. A disgruntled Mourinho looked for an alternative, asking Zidane to say on TV that referees were conspiring in favour of Barcelona. The first-team director knew he had upset the players by aligning himself with similar positions in the past and turned down the idea. Mourinho took this as a betrayal. Appearing a beaten man, he announced that it was best for him not to talk to anyone. It was the beginning of what some called the ‘law of silence’, the principal consequence of which was the disappearance of Zidane from Mourinho’s immediate group.

Next, Mourinho briefed Karanka to go around saying that Zidane was the latest name on the list of those who had been disloyal. Meanwhile, the Frenchman confessed to a friend that the further away you kept from Mourinho the better, since he had not met anyone more devious in the 30 years he had worked in professional football.

Mourinho called the squad together on the way back from Villarreal and tried to explain why he thought he had to vilify referees. Those attending the meeting suggest that, just as he was starting to say that he knew there was a conspiracy against Madrid, Casillas interrupted him.

The goalkeeper said, ‘Look, everyone here can do what they want. We’re all old enough so anyone who wants to bad-mouth referees can do so, and anyone who doesn’t want to doesn’t have to. What I think is, instead of thinking about which referees we’ve got, we should forget the stories and concentrate on the matches, because this is very complicated. If we’re going to concentrate on the stories we’re going to get distracted. It would be a mistake. If we keep talking about referees then we’re going to lose the league – that’s for sure.’

Any analysis of the refereeing of the games involving La Liga’s big two between 2010 and 2013 would invite the conclusion that Mourinho’s paranoia – if he really had any – was unfounded. This is especially true for the 2011–12 season. In this campaign Madrid had five players sent off, one more than Barça. In everything else they enjoyed the more favourable decisions. Madrid were awarded a single penalty against them for every 13 in their favour, while Barça were given one against them for every 11 in their favour. In that season Madrid benefited from the sending off of 14 opposition players as against the eight that were sent off playing against Barça. In total, between the 2010–11 and 2012–13 seasons Madrid were given 34 penalties and Barcelona 21, despite the fact that, statistically, the Catalan team enjoyed far more possession in their opponents’ half.

The players were well aware of these numbers. What is more, they had decided a long time ago that they were not going to get involved in the boss’s battles, particularly when he was fighting them in Villarreal. It was at this point that many thought that Mourinho had finally been completely laid bare following his outburst against a team that were about to go down. Later on, Rui Faria and Karanka admitted that what he really feared was being thought of as the manager who lost the league after having enjoyed a ten-point lead. With the pending trip to the Camp Nou, the possibility of a Barcelona league comeback made him suspect that his players had abandoned him and that they could even intentionally lose the game in order to destroy him. His reaction was to refuse to give press conferences for the remainder of the league season.

The major concern of the players was now no longer the link between Mourinho and Jorge Mendes, their relationship with the media, propaganda, referees or their own contracts. All of these had retreated into the background. Everything was secondary to the most pressing issue, winning the league. This alone would redeem them, return their workplace to a state of peace, put them in a better position in front of the boss and regain the respect of the fans, and guarantee them a good price in the market for a future transfer. But all this depended on them solving one problem: how to play the game in tight spaces.

After two years, Mourinho had failed to come up with any solutions to make the team more creative at times when they needed to attack their opponent’s goal without much space in front of them. The difficulty of controlling games when they had control of the ball but were faced with teams that packed the area led various players to hold a meeting after the Villarreal match. The first players to speak were Alonso, Ramos, Casillas, Arbeloa and Higuaín. They agreed that since the coach could not help them in this particular matter, then they should themselves devise a remedy. They planned to squeeze the pitch more and ignore the order that the forwards had to remain up front, never dropping deeper to offer themselves in midfield. They also contemplated the idea of the central striker getting into wider areas to generate more space.

Although the team had problems developing their play, they counted on a universally accepted remedy. It was called Cristiano Ronaldo and he had just turned 27 years old – a magical number for goalscorers, the age at which Romario, Van Basten and Henry clocked up their career-best goal tallies for a single season. With four games left to go before the end of the campaign, on the eve of travelling to the Camp Nou, Ronaldo had scored 41 goals in 33 matches. His statistics were unbelievable. Since the times of the legendary Puskas and Di Stéfano there had been nobody capable of beating or even matching their goal returns. Although he did not possess the vision, the timing or the range of passing of these two giants of the game, he surpassed them in terms of finishing. What he could not manage with subtlety he resolved with a missile strike. He had been decisive in almost all the difficult games. In Málaga (3 goals), in Valencia (2), against Atlético at the Bernabeu (3) and the Calderón (3), against Sevilla at the Sánchez Pizjuán (2), against Athletic Bilbao (2), against Betis in Seville (2) and in the Sadar against Osasuna (3). When he failed to score, Madrid suffered. Of the 11 games in which Ronaldo went goalless, his team lost two and drew three. If Ronaldo responded in the right way, having to play the game in tight spaces could be forgotten. It was enough, as at the Calderón or the Sadar, for him just to fire a rocket from outside the area.

Events sucked the two contenders into the funnel of the Camp Nou. On Saturday 21 April Madrid faced Barça, hoping to settle the league. The sun had warmed up the afternoon as if it were summer and a warm breeze was blowing when the two teams took to the field. With just four games left, Madrid led the table with four points. Lass had been banished for insubordination, so Mourinho picked his least experimental midfield in a team featuring Casillas, Arbeloa, Pepe, Ramos, Coentrão, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Özil, Ronaldo and Benzema. More innovative was Guardiola, who left Pedro on the bench, lining up with Valdés, Puyol, Mascherano, Adriano, Alves, Busquets, Xavi, Thiago, Tello, Messi and Iniesta.

This was Casillas’s 15th game in the Camp Nou. He knew the dressing room, the tunnel, the music all off by heart. The Barça hymn was about to begin when the captain shouted as loudly as he could for the players to go out on to the pitch. His voice was so loud it could be heard from both benches.

‘
Señores
,’ he said. ‘We’re going to forget about the controversies. We’re going to forget about the referees. And we’re going to put all our energy into playing football. We can do it! We can do it!’

It was a vociferous call to play the game in the way Madrid once used to. After two years of confusion, the message was crystal clear. Mourinho, who was well within earshot, pretended he had not heard.

In the event, Madrid played one of their least vigorous
clásicos
in a long time. Under the direction of Ramos, an increasingly influential leader, they carried out the basic idea of pressing deep in their own half and then counter-attacking. On previous occasions such tactics had proved to be woefully inadequate, but this time Barça did not play to their usual standard. The Madrid players commented that Messi was like someone playing within themselves because they are carrying a muscle injury – he walked, looked around and brooded. Was he saving himself? If so, for what? Something in the home side was not quite right. As the game went on, it became apparent that Guardiola and Messi had had an argument, perhaps even completely rupturing their relationship. Messi no longer wanted to play under the Catalan and Guardiola knew that his own time at Barcelona was up.

Barcelona started to fall apart from the inside, and Madrid were ready to take advantage – with Ronaldo at his peak.

A fan’s vision tends to be less sharp than a professional footballer’s. The supporters in the stands – or those watching the game on TV – often get the sense that something dramatic is happening but do not know what. On the pitch players see the small details with such clarity that they can distinguish the banal from the extraordinary. That afternoon in the Camp Nou the Madrid players were left in no doubt about one thing: the magical touch of Mesut Özil.

It is not just fans who build players into legends. On certain occasions the players themselves admire a fellow professional to the point of worship. From that day in Barcelona the members of the Madrid dressing room gave one player this legendary status; a player who was just 23 and who, with all the pressure of the situation, was able to do something that very rarely comes off, even in training. A touch worthy of a champion.

It happened in the 72nd minute. Barça had just drawn level at 1–1 through Alexis, the goal confirming that the home side had regained their rhythm and poise. Bit by bit the
Azulgrana
were taking control of Madrid territory with their passing and fluid movement, making the Madrid players expect that another defeat was just around the corner, another league title squandered. But then the unexpected took place.

Three minutes after Alexis scored, Özil received the ball on the right-hand side of the Barcelona half. For a left-footed player getting the correct body shape to play a pass from the right is usually difficult because the effect of the foot on the ball tends to send it towards goal. But the German magician acted with a cold but completely correct impulse, even though it went against the nature of the mechanics of the human body. He controlled the ball, then with his next touch, as if he were cutting something with a knife, he sent the ball forward, giving it a little bit of swerve, using the top of the foot to impart just the right amount of speed.

The 40-yard pass was perfectly weighted. The ball flew low and at pace but because of the screw-back Özil applied, instead of running through to Valdés it slowed down just behind Mascherano, who could not turn in time, and too far away from the goalkeeper. Then Ronaldo appeared like a bullet.

He confessed to his team-mates that when he received such a perfect pass he was at first stunned, then anxious.

‘I was nervous. I knew that if I didn’t get my first touch right the chance would be gone,’ he said.

Ronaldo did not fail. Controlling the pass with the outside of his right foot, he found his range, took two steps forward, dropped his hip and drove his foot through the ball. It gained height halfway through its trajectory, clearing the outstretched hand of Valdés. It was the most important goal of Ronaldo’s career in Spain, and meant that Madrid were all but champions.

When the game finished Madrid’s dressing room was soon full of excited players. From the showers a bellow could be heard that shook the walls, an almost superhuman noise, in a voice not dissimilar to Higuaín’s: