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Jose Mourinho’s has lasted nine years, laying waste to swathes of European football with its unique brand of narcissistic aggression.
Other managers, many of them august and principled men, have been swept aside and ridiculed as the Special One blew their reputations to smithereens.
But yesterday when he climbed back up on to the stage at Real Madrid’s training ground, Mourinho spoke like a missile that had lost the knack of how to seek heat.
He looked more careworn and thinner than we remember him at Chelsea or even in his firestorm days at Inter Milan. There was no fight in him.
He kept a sneer on his face for much of the time, bristling at some of the questions from the Spanish media with whom he has a fractious relationship. But mostly, he seemed dispirited and listless.
It is rare to be able to tell that he is under pressure but yesterday, as his Real team prepared to face Spurs in the first leg of their Champions League quarter final, it was easy.
There was melancholy in his words and his eyes were never still, darting restlessly all over the room even when he was listening to the answers of his striker, Gonzalo Higuain, who was sitting next to him.
Some of it stems from the fact that on Saturday, Real lost to Sporting Gijon at the Bernabeu, ending Mourinho’s remarkable nine-year record of not losing a home league game.
But there is a wider issue for Mourinho in Spain, too. It is beginning to dawn on him that even his customary habit of throwing money as well as attitude at the situation might not be enough to get close to a team like Barcelona.
Real Madrid may be second to the Catalan giants but they are eight points behind them and a world away in terms of the football they play.
That means Mourinho’s season and his future at Real, already a topic of fierce debate, hinges on the quarter-final tie with Spurs, not necessarily good news for Harry Redknapp’s team.
But look at his probable side tonight and it does not strike fear into an opponent the way Barcelona’s does. Sure men like Ronaldo, Di Maria, Adebayor, Higuain and Ozil are fine players but they’re not Xavi, David Villa, Iniesta and Messi.
Mourinho is not used to being made to look second-rate and so the coping mechanism he adopted yesterday was to suggest that the Champions League was really the only trophy he cared about anyway.
Convenient, that, especially given that he is one of only a select few managers to have won the competition twice and now to have guided Madrid to the last eight for the first time in seven years.
“This is the kind of match that Real has not played in for some years,” Mourinho reminded everyone, “and that the Santiago Bernabeu has not seen for some years.
“The Champions League is the most important club competition in the world. This match with Spurs is the only match we have been thinking about.
“It is too beautiful a match to be thinking about other things.”
At that point, Mourinho turned to Higuain. “How many times have you played in the quarter-finals of the Champions League?” he asked him.
“None,” Higuain said.
“None,” Mourinho repeated for emphasis.
“He is a top player, too. Do you think he was worrying about Sporting Gijon? No, of course not.”
So that was La Liga neatly and briefly dismissed. Just in case anyone thought he might have cared.
As for the rest of his performance, Mourinho dwelled as long as he could on the injury problems that have beset his side and then lavished praise on Spurs’ Rafael Van der Vaart for choosing to leave Madrid in the summer.
Listen to this because it almost sounded as though Mourinho was sending out a rather crude coded message to his employers.
“Rafael made a good choice,” he said. “I always like players to be happy and I feel he is very happy now. I feel he is a very happy boy now.
“I am very happy he is doing so well and I am very happy he is happy. So, again, he made a very good choice.”
Mourinho was happy for Gareth Bale, too, although he said Madrid probably wouldn’t buy him because they already had Cristiano Ronaldo to play in his position on the left.
And, finally, Mourinho was happy for Redknapp.
“Harry is my friend,” Mourinho said, “and friends are always nice to each other. I say nice things about him and he says nice things about me. That’s life.
“He is a good manager for any team, including a national team. I think there is no limits for him. Give him a team, a national team and he is ready for anything.
“I’m very happy for him. I hope, and I say this from my heart, that if I don’t reach the final, then I hope he does it.”
What he didn’t say was that if Redknapp reaches the final, that means Tottenham will have beaten Real. And if that happens, the torpedo of truth will zero in on Mourinho.
Read more: http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/blogs/mirror-football-blog/Champions-League-Real-Madrid-v-Tottenham-Has-the-shadow-of-Barcelona-finally-taken-the-shine-off-Jose-Mourinho-s-status-as-The-Special-One-Oliver-Holt-Opinion-article720106.html#ixzz1If74bTzX
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