The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho (23 page)

‘Are we going to talk about referees now?’

Everyone broke down in hysterics. Mourinho’s Madrid had just completed their first clear victory in a
clásico
. The statistics reflected the mountain the team had just climbed: two wins, one in the cup final and the other in this league game, set against four draws and five defeats.

Madrid competed in their three last games with a renewed vigour, finishing the season with two records. They picked up more points than any team had done before with 100 and they scored a record number of goals with 115. Never before in the league had three players from the same team reached 20 goals: Benzema on 20, Higuaín with 22 and Ronaldo’s extraordinary 44.

Celebrations in Madrid started with a lunch at which the Spanish players discovered that Mourinho had raised Di María’s salary in January, with back pay. The Argentinian, despite having had a very bitty season, jumped up the pay scale to the extent that with his €4 million net salary he was now on the same level as Alonso, Ramos and Higuaín, all of whom had won silverware, including two leagues in 2006 and 2007 – and in the case of the two Spanish players, a World Cup. Players contracted to Jorge Mendes, it was observed, renewed their contracts with greater speed than any others. Since 2010, everyone apart from Coentrão had received a pay rise thanks to Mourinho’s insistence. It all reminded the dressing room that favouritism would continue if the coach stayed.

The celebration in the Plaza de Cibeles acted as a release. Casillas climbed up the statue of the goddess after whom the square is named and draped the club flag across her; when he clambered down he embraced Ronaldo before the vast crowd, signifying the beginning of a close friendship. As for Mourinho, he spent the open-top bus journey taking photos with his assistants while holding up seven fingers, one hand open and the other with two fingers raised in victory: his seven league titles, two in Portugal, two in England, two in Italy and one in Spain …

After the party at the Bernabéu the entourage headed for the official dinner. They had spent several hours laughing together and at this point most did not care who they were with. But not Lass. The Frenchman asked if Mourinho would be present. When it was confirmed to him that the coach would be attending he said he would rather go home.

‘And this is because injustice creates divisions and hatred and fighting, and justice imparts harmony and friendship; is that not true, Thrasymachus?’

Plato,
The Republic
, Book 1

The Glasgow Hilton is a hotel for businessmen. It is located in the tallest tower in the centre of the city, silhouetted against a grey skyline. The 20-storey structure, rising above the nearby M8 motorway, dripped with rain in the early hours of 16 May 2002. In a poorly lit room on one of the top floors, what looked to the untrained eye like the annual convention of a kitchen-appliance multinational was taking place. It was actually the celebratory dinner of Real Madrid, who had just been proclaimed champions of Europe and were celebrating the
novena
, their ninth European Cup, in an event presided over by Florentino Pérez.

‘We have won the
novena
and next year we will go for the
décima
, and then the
undécima
and the
duodécima
,’ said the president, in reference to the 10th, 11th and 12th European Cups surely soon to follow.

The team’s victory, winning the final 2–1 against Bayer Leverkusen, had been swallowed up by institutional protocol. Before the salmon pie, the sirloin steak with potatoes and the ice cream were served, Pérez gave a speech that at the time amazed some of the players because of the casual way in which he spoke about what they had just achieved.

Steve McManaman recalled the evening at the Hilton in his autobiography
Macca
, like someone remembering a glass of tap water they once had. ‘With Real Madrid,’ wrote the former England international, ‘you have to make the most of celebrating on the pitch because it’s never a great laugh afterwards. They don’t so much party as mark an occasion. You go from twenty or thirty people, the team and support staff, going ballistic celebrating, spraying champagne everywhere, to a three-course banquet at the Hilton with hundreds and hundreds of unfamiliar faces, TV cameras and press everywhere. There’s nothing personal about it. I’d won my second European Cup winner’s medal, but I didn’t have a wild time. We had a very formal, sit-down meal and speeches. My dad and all our mates were out drinking until dawn, having a fantastic time, but I was on best behaviour at the official banquet.’

The random nature of football conditions the industry that surrounds it in the most profound way. Perhaps, following the logic of other types of industries, Pérez saw the accumulation of European Cups as something normal. He did not know at the time that after Glasgow, in the eight seasons in which he presided over Madrid until 2013, there would be no celebrations for winning the tournament or even for reaching the final. Nor did he imagine that his theory that European competitions could be dominated by the club’s spending power – nobody was able to match him in the market place – would turn out to be so difficult in practice.

In the decade that followed the Glasgow final Madrid’s signings broke all transfer records in the history of football. Their investment in new players approached the €1,000 million mark. Of all the champions of Europe in this period, only Chelsea (€950 million) came close to that figure. Barcelona (€600), Inter (€590), Manchester United (€550), Bayern (€400), Milan (€400) and Porto (€300) did not need that much money to win the remaining trophies.

The ‘10th’ Champions League went from being an almost tangible reality in the imagination of Madrid supporters to becoming a utopian dream. But 10 years after the dinner at the Hilton the feeling among supporters was that they were not far from another European title. The progression of the team during the 2011–12 tournament was as comfortable as the apparent weakness of their opponents suggested. Olympique Lyon, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb, CSKA and APOEL offered little resistance in Madrid’s march to the semi-finals. There, Bayern Munich, who were second in the Bundesliga, awaited them. Bayern’s total revenues, according to Deloitte, were €321 million in the previous season. In the same year Madrid had earned €480 million, and were now leading the league with two Ballon d’Or winners, a handful of world champions and a coach with a very successful record in UEFA competitions. Renewed optimism swept through both the board of directors and the supporters.

Two questions dominated Madrid’s trip to Munich: first, would Mourinho have the courage to replace Marcelo, the best left-back in the world, with Fabio Coentrão, who almost all his team-mates thought was the worst player in the squad? Second, would he play with a
trivote
?

The probability of the
trivote
returning increased the moment that Lass, who had been out for a long time, was named in the squad list. But when the team met up at the Westin Grand Hotel in Munich on 16 April Mourinho had already decided that the insubordination of the French midfielder was exceptionally serious. In order to defend his own authority as coach – and as Lass seemed perfectly able to get himself sent off on purpose to hurt him – he chose to give up his midfield fetish. This made Lass for the time being a mere tourist in Munich and meant the ‘high-pressure triangle’, in its most celebrated version at least, was ruled out. But nothing deterred Mourinho from implementing the same ideas with appropriate modifications: in place of Lass he could play Özil, Di María or even Marcelo.

The team-talk helped answer the first of these two questions: Coentrão would play. The team would be Casillas, Arbeloa, Pepe, Ramos, Coentrão, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Özil, Ronaldo and Benzema. The plan was to lean towards a 4-2-3-1 formation, with the line-up favouring the more subtle members of the squad, although many of Mourinho’s instructions were more in keeping with the
trivote
.

Until then, when preparing the 4-2-3-1 Mourinho had asked his line of three attacking midfielders formed by Di María, Özil and Ronaldo to drop deep and offer themselves to the rest of the team so the ball could be played out from the back. Against most opponents he did not object to building from the back. In Munich the instruction was to play direct, missing out the midfield with long, diagonal passes to Di María or Ronaldo, or even longer passes to Benzema, all taking the load off Özil. The German midfielder was told to venture forward, watch for the second ball, without taking the risk of dropping deep to join in the passing moves. Mourinho told his team they should only come out on the charge if they provoked an error from Bayern. Worried about losing the ball in midfield and suffering on the counter-attack at the hands of Robben and Ribéry, he had decided to play as if the midfield did not exist.

The two teams had finished their warm-ups in the Allianz Arena when Kaká crossed paths with his friend Marcelo in the tunnel. The two embraced.

‘What?’ Kaká said. ‘You’re not playing today but you’ll play in the Bernabéu to save the tie? Don’t get your hopes up, though. You won’t be playing in the final!’

Kaká laughed. Marcelo, a compulsive joker, incapable until then of confronting a set-back without a smile, looked very serious. He shrugged his shoulders and looked down at the ground, as if he were trying to overcome his dejection. Kaká grabbed him round the shoulders and tried to cheer him up.

‘Really, it’s very unfair. You gifted us the knockout at APOEL. If we’ve got this far without any problems it’s been thanks to you.’

The game was deadlocked. Both teams were keen not to give away any space and to deny their opponents time on the ball. They were still finding their way when Ribéry controlled a rebound from a corner and scored through a forest of standing legs. The 1–0 scoreline alarmed Mourinho, who changed the formation on 20 minutes from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-2-1. Di María left the wing to switch to the right of Alonso, while Özil moved to the far right. An improvised
trivote
, it provoked a barrage of long-balls that spoiled the game. When Özil scored, following a counter-attack by Ronaldo and Benzema, it was in Madrid’s only attack on goal. In his attempt to close the match down at 1–1 Mourinho ordered a complete withdrawal from Bayern’s half, as well as adding some brawn to the midfield by replacing Di María with Granero, Benzema with Higuaín and Özil with Marcelo. The Brazilian took up his position on the left of the
trivote
with so much frustration and so little enthusiasm that he seemed to be making every effort to get himself sent off. The kick he gave Müller should have been a red card. But referee Howard Webb missed it.

A feint and a change of direction from Lahm on the edge of the area sent Coentrão to the ground in the 90th minute. The German crossed the ball with the outside of his right foot and no one got in front of Mario Gómez, who stabbed the ball home. It was the winner on the night, making it 2–1. And it was the goal that would completely transform the tie.

After Webb blew the final whistle, the revolt that had been organised in the visitors’ dressing room had only one theme: the stubbornness of the manager to ‘make his mark’, as the players said, even if it meant harming his own team’s chances. Arbeloa, Higuaín, Lass, Callejón, Casillas and Ramos were among the most forceful of those who spoke. They did not question the conservatism of Mourinho’s approach nor the changes he made, which they also judged to have been wrong, with anything like the vehemence that they criticised his decision of who to play down the left. They said Coentrão was a problem; he was no better defensively than Marcelo and offered nothing going forward; they regretted that by insisting on his place in the starting line-up Mourinho had jeopardised everyone else’s hard work. They said that lately the impression had been given that the squad was there merely to serve Coentrão’s promotion. Now getting quite angry, they reeled off his errors: in Moscow he gave away a useless foul that enabled CSKA to draw 1–1, in Cyprus the team did not function properly until he was replaced by Marcelo, and against Barça at the Bernabéu in both the league and cup he made significant errors in marking Fàbregas, Iniesta and Messi that prevented his team winning the game.

To point to the failings of Coentrão was, if possible, even more relevant than usual. For a counter-attacking team like Madrid, according to the majority of the players, there was a massive difference between taking a 1–1 or a 2–1 into the home leg. The 2–1 meant that Bayern could go to the Bernabéu, sit back and wait for Madrid to attack them. It was exactly what they did not want after two years of being coached on defending deep and playing quick counter-attacking football themselves. They had lost the ability to play in compressed spaces and take the initiative in matches.

‘Now we’re not going to have any space,’ they said. ‘We get choked by teams who stick everyone in the area. It happened against Sporting. So how’s it not going to happen against Bayern?’ Their feeling of impotence was reflected in a remark that was repeated more than once: ‘It’s all Mourinho’s fault.’

The
décima
that was so very attainable in the eyes of the media close to the club was now transformed into an odyssey in the corridors of the home dressing room.

‘When are we ever going to have such a good draw?’ they asked themselves. ‘When are we ever going to have the return leg at home again in so many ties?’ The players believed that in Munich the coach had compromised a historic opportunity.

In the return leg Madrid played with the same formation and the same men as in Munich, except for Marcelo, who, as Kaká had predicted, came in for Coentrão. Bayern took to the field with Neuer, Lahm, Boateng, Badstuber, Alaba, Schweinsteiger, Luiz Gustavo, Robben, Kroos, Ribéry and Mario Gómez.

Mourinho told his players to press in medium-block, never taking the defensive line any further than 20 yards from the edge of the area. Madrid made a thunderous start. Alonso released Di María with some probing passes, Khedira pushed forward in search of the second ball and Neuer did not take long to make his first save. Another run and cross from Di María ended with Alaba handling the ball in the box, and Ronaldo scoring the resulting penalty. Before the quarter-hour he was put through by Özil and beat Neuer to make it 2–0. Bayern were not to be intimidated. Robben missed with only Casillas to beat and Khedira cleared a shot from Ribéry. It was enough to make Mourinho come into the technical area, shouting and gesticulating for his players to drop deeper. The team sat back in low-block. Anti-climax. Bayern exploited the new situation by taking control of the middle of the pitch with Schweinsteiger and Kroos. Madrid were in full retreat mode when Pepe brought down Gómez in the area after 27 minutes, with Robben scoring the equaliser from the penalty spot.

The half-time team-talk would for ever stay in the minds of the players. Mourinho took to the floor and addressed his audience. According to witnesses the message was the one that had been ruminating for months.

‘
Señores
,’ he said, ‘we must be intelligent …’

The use of the word ‘intelligent’ in the euphemistic language of the manager amounted to requesting that the players renounce their childish scruples. They had to leave to one side the ball, their vanity and their pride. To explain what he wanted he said that the game had become complicated; they had to keep pressing in low-block in order to conserve energy because they were deep into a long season and their energy levels were low. As if the instruction were based on a detailed half-time study of each of his players’ fitness, he told them to stop pressing at goal-kicks and throw-ins because it was wasted energy. ‘We’ll wait for them a bit,’ he said. ‘We’ll float.’ But if they won the ball back they could allow themselves to counter-attack without losing their shape at the back.

The talk had an immediate effect. Until that point the game had belonged to the players. Now it passed into the hands of the coach. For some players the instructions might have served a purpose, but this was a dressing room containing some of the best players in the world. On hearing that it was best to surrender both the ball and most of the pitch to the opposition they became demoralised.

This change on the pitch silenced much of Madrid’s support from the stands. As the team became more and more reclusive, the home fans quietened down. Meanwhile, the Bayern supporters could be heard for the first time. The decrease in the volume coming from the home fans made Mourinho furious and he showed his frustration to his assistants by pointing to the stands. Every time that Bayern got anywhere near Casillas’s area, he vented his frustration: