So Gary Neville stans for José Mourinho ;)
Exclusive interview
Jose Mourinho reveals all on his desire to stay at Chelsea, his relationship with Eden Hazard, how he inspired his team to beat Liverpool and why he is so dismissive of 'buzzword' coaching
The fire was never brighter in Jose Mourinho’s eyes than when we discussed his side’s dramatic 2-0 win at Anfield in April, which ruined Liverpool’s title hopes and showed Chelsea’s manager at his tactical and psychological best. The finest coaches are dangerous when they feel wronged. Don’t back them into a corner. It was Ferguson-esque.
Up in the TV gantry 90 minutes before kick-off that day, I saw signs that Mourinho and Chelsea were on a mission. In his office at the club’s Cobham training ground this week I tested that theory on him. As he answered I saw the determination of that amazing day return to his features. Chelsea had no intention, he says, of playing “the clown” at somebody else’s party.
“I felt during part of last season that the country wanted Liverpool to be champion,” he starts out. “The media, the press: a lot was to put Liverpool there. Nobody was saying they were in a privileged situation because they didn’t play Champions League. Nobody was speaking about a lot, a lot of decisions that helped them win important and crucial points. And I felt that day was a day that was ready for their celebration.
“I used the word with my players. I said - we are going to be the clowns, they want us to be the clowns in the circus. The circus is here. Liverpool are to be champions.”
I interject: “You weren’t having that, were you?”
He fixes with me with a look: “No.”
There is more to it, though. By refusing to move the game to the previous day, when Chelsea had a Champions League semi-final to prepare for, did Liverpool goad Mourinho’s men into a performance with extra vigour, and so contribute to their own downfall? My interview subject thinks so.
“I knew the process that hangs with the fact that we didn’t play the day before,” he says. “Because we wanted to play the day before - the Saturday, because we played the Champions League semi-final on the Wednesday. And I know exactly step by step. Because we went deep on it. We couldn’t accept it. The title was lost for us, and we didn’t understand how an English team that is representing England in the semi-final [didn’t] have the right to play on the Saturday.
“We went deep. It was a Sky decision? We went to Sky. When people were saying it’s a Premier League decision we went to the Premier League. When people were saying it was a Liverpool issue we went also to smell the situation. And the people who were involved in that decision - they were wrong.
“I think if we play the day before we don’t play with the same spirit we did on the Sunday.”
Wow. Here was the killer line. The casual Sunday outfit - tracksuit and hoodie - the unshaven face. Was it all part of Mourinho’s plan to lull Liverpool and then shut them down? I think my instincts were correct.
I am here, more generally, to find out about Mourinho’s management style, how long he might stay at Chelsea, whether young English players will finally be promoted to the starting XI and how he compares this season’s team to the one he inherited last year. Pleasingly, he speaks of a “moral commitment” to nurture young English talent.
On the longevity issue, I wonder what his response would be if Chelsea offered him a six-year contract extension. “I sign tomorrow. That’s what I want,” he says. “I want to stay in Chelsea and English football because I think I won the right. My wife says many times I won the right to stop when I want. She says I won enough, I did enough, I created a good situation for the family. She says I won the right to do what I want. Unfortunately Chelsea’s not my club. I depend on the club and I depend on the results.”
We spend an hour and 40 minutes discussing all this and more. I start by reminding him that he first came seriously to my attention sliding down our touchline - the Old Trafford touchline - when his Porto side knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League in 2004. I played in that game, 10 years ago, and it helped Mourinho on the path to a Champions League title and the Chelsea job, though he would have made it to the top regardless.
“When I remember that [knee slide], the good thing for me is that last year I did the same,” he says. “So it was not something from a young coach, it was not something from somebody who feels that moment was my moment to change my career. Last year I did exactly the same against Paris Saint-Germain and hopefully this year I will do another one. So this is part of me. This is part of the way I sometimes don’t control the emotion, the happiness.
“But going back to that day, I think I was already in important contact to leave Portugal so it was not because of that game and that moment I had the interest from Chelsea. I was already in on that.”
Passion is a major part of Mourinho’s make-up, and looking back to another phase of his career - as Sir Bobby Robson’s assistant at Barcelona - he remembers joking with his old mentor about a line Sir Bobby took from the Cobbolds at Ipswich. “Bobby Robson used to say - I disagreed with him - when we lose a match, don’t be so sad, just think that in the other dressing room the guys are so happy. Don’t be so sad, it’s not the end of the world.” He pulls a comedy face and makes agonised sounds as he tells the tale.
In his own career he says he has learned to “respect the guy who deserves to win,” and cites the example of Crystal Palace, who inflicted a painful league defeat on Chelsea at Selhurst Park in March: “I wanted to kill my guys. But they [Palace] were amazing. And they needed those points to survive. So, in the middle of my unhappiness, I was mature enough to say - hey, these guys were brilliant, because they did very well. I told the [Palace] guys ‘congratulations’ one by one.”
Since then Chelsea have risen a notch with the additions of Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas, among others. So this is my chance to ask Mourinho about his side’s swift development. Would he trust the team now away at Crystal Palace?
He says: “Yeah, yeah. Last year, I was feeling that we could [win the league] but we were not ready to cope with that pressure.”
Why?
“Because we had certain limitations in the team in terms of tactical qualities, technical qualities, and we were aware of that. My style of leadership is not a style. I try to have a leadership that is adapted to the reality. And last year I was feeling that they were not ready for what I call a pressure leadership - or confrontational leadership. The team as a team was mentally - and even tactically - unstable.
“We couldn’t cope with certain moments of the game. My feeling is that obviously this season we’re going to lose matches, but I don’t think we are going to lose matches because we couldn’t cope with a certain moment, or a specific [part] of the game.
“Last year we had problems when the opposite team was closed in a low block [deep-lying defence], we had problems when the other team was putting direct pressure on us with direct football, we couldn’t cope very well when we had two or three or four consecutive matches, and we had to keep that high focus for one two, three four matches.
“When we were in a good run, I was feeling that the end of the run was coming. You know what I’m saying, because you [he means me] felt that through your whole career. Win today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. By one side, it’s a habit. By the other, you get tired, because it’s the responsibility every day. My team, last year, with a lot of guys, was not ready for that.
“So my team was unstable. This season we improve footballistically, with Diego and Fabregas, no doubt. When we analyse in tactical and technical terms, they represent the kind of player we need, the kind of second midfield player, the quality of striker. We were lucky to have in the market available for us exactly the style of player we need. But what people maybe don’t realise is that the maturity of our team, the personality of our team, changed a lot.”
I suggest to him that the Premier League cannot be won without strength, power, durability. I’m trying to find out where he sees the balance between artistry and calculation. He shows himself to be a pragmatist, free of rigid philosophies or pre-arranged ideas.
“Obviously talent is so important,” he says. “And how many points are you going to win based on talent? A lot. But how many points do you lose based on the qualities you are speaking about [character, strength]? You lose also a lot of points. So the balance is between the talent you need and these mental qualities, team qualities.”
With this improved and tougher Chelsea side five points clear of Manchester City (and with a trip to Manchester United looming, next Sunday), Mourinho is not rushing to proclaim his team as champions.
“Five points is nothing,” he says. “But I think Man City have everything. I think they have lots of talent and they have lots of physicality. They have more options than everyone else. When you speak about the replica - the second right back - they have replicas for every position. They can cope with injuries, they can cope with suspensions, and the team is basically very stable.
“From Mancini’s time, three years with the same team, players in the best moment of their careers, they don’t have the young players in the development phase, they don’t have players who next season can be better than this season. They don’t have yet - Frank [Lampard] is the only one of that age - the players who next year are going to be one, heavy year older. They are all on the 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 level.
“You tell me. If we keep this team, and they keep that team: in five years time, who is going to be better?
“I say immediately - us, because in five years I’m going to have Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Azpilicueta, Zouma, in the best moment of their careers, and the fantastic players I have now, at 28, 29. A fantastic team with lots of solutions.”
In his second spell at Chelsea, Mourinho is clearly settled, relaxed, and on good terms with his employers. He is a man in control of his team and his players. An example: Eden Hazard, who brings an almost father-son glow to Mourinho’s eyes. He is the player I want to talk most about in this interview, because I have noticed Mourinho challenging him, publicly, to fulfil his talent. He gives me a fascinating insight.
He starts out: “I don’t know if you agree with me, but the profile of the ‘man player’ you found in football 15 years ago is different to the majority of the players you found at the end of your career. They are different kids. I think Eden is out of context at this moment. Why? Because he’s a fantastic kid. He is humble, very humble. Very nice. Very polite. Selfish - zero. Egocentric - zero. He is fantastic.
“I had a conversation with his father. His father told me something that I loved. I don’t think it’s a problem to tell you. He said - ‘I have a wonderful son. He is a wonderful father. He is a wonderful husband. I want him to change, because I want him to be a wonderful player. But I don’t want him to change a lot. I don’t want him to become - and he used the name of two or three players. I just want him to be the same husband, the same father, the same son, with a little but more tenacity, mental aggression, ambition, personal ego. A little bit more. And you are the guy to give it to him.’
“We can never transform these fantastic players and men into a competitive animal, a competitive machine. Not even his father wants [that]. We have just to bring him to a different level, working hard in training, which he’s doing.”
Is Hazard responding to that message?
“Yes, yes, yes. He’s never afraid to play and take responsibility. But it’s not about that. It’s about him saying - today, I have to be decisive. What he says in that press interview, when he says ‘I’m not one of the five top players in the world’ - he can be, but he cannot be in a match where he doesn’t do something in the 90 minutes that makes him decisive.
“The week before against Arsenal, I was on him every day - be decisive. Don’t be happy with doing nice things. Don’t be happy being up and down in the game. You have to do something in the game that wins the game for us. And he did. This is the point with Eden. The talent is amazing, and the human side of him - especially in the modern days, because I work with top players for 30 years - he is not from these times. He’s from the old times.”
A common belief is that Mourinho can’t abide players - wingers especially - not tracking back. It is more complicated than that, he maintains: “I had some guys in my career - they didn’t want to [defend]. You try to build something behind them to protect. His [Hazard’s] problem is not that. He wants. The only problem is to be focused during the 90 minutes and understand when he has to, and when he doesn’t have to.
“I always say to him - you look to the situation. Sometimes you don’t need to [track back]. And you have to learn to read the game to know when you don’t have to. For example, if Matic is completely closed on the left side, and just behind him, I don’t want him to come. I want Matic to cope with the situation. I love to work with him. I love the kid. He will always have my support. He knows my nature. Our relationship is at a point where I can tell him anything. He knows I like him a lot. We are fine because of that.”
So after a series of moves from Portugal to England to Italy, Spain and back to England, I ask whether he is at Chelsea for the long-haul. He runs through his cv: “I had a career project. Many times you cannot follow your career project. I want to leave Portugal and come to England. Clear. When I leave England I want Italy. I’m mad to go to Italy, where people are talking about the mentality of the Italians, the tactical aspect of the game. And after that I want Real Madrid. Spain - but I wanted Real Madrid. This circle - I want very much to do it, and I did it.
“When I did it came the [question]: where do you like more, where are you happier? Which is the biggest challenge? I made the choice.
“I keep saying the same. In every club I was working and thinking about that club, but I always have my next movement. This is the first time where I don’t have my next movement. I want to stay. I want to stay till the moment Chelsea tells me it’s over, because the results are not good, or they want to go in another direction, or they don’t agree with my style of management - for any reason. This period at Chelsea is going to hang by their decision, not my decision.”
One of the benefits for Chelsea, I suggest, would be continuity at last: “That was the objective, but to make that movement I had to be very sure what I was doing, especially because I didn’t want to come back to my club - because I can say Chelsea and Inter are my clubs - after a very nice period I had here, and not be happy again. And not to make good things again.
“Mr Abramovich gave a lot of time to think about that. Also when he invited me to come back it took time for me to analyse the situation. The Chelsea team we started building in 2004/2005 is finished. We have just two or three boys from that time. We need to rebuild the team. And the perspective now is different from 10 years ago, because the perspective then was about spend not-in-a-controlled-way.
“So me and the club found each other in a very good moment. I think the club was waiting for a manager like me, and I was waiting for my Chelsea to have this new profile. Hopefully we can hold together for many years.”
This summer’s changes brought £125m into the club for players that were surplus to requirements and an influx of players Mourinho obviously feels are his picks. He explains: “With these assets or players who are not fundamental for me, it’s where you - meaning, my club - have to do the best possible job for me. Is this easy to say when you are talking about very good players? It’s not easy.
“For example, [Juan] Mata to Man Utd. We are losing a very good player to a direct opponent. Would this have happened 10 years ago? Maybe not. But in the modern football and the new economic reality [for Chelsea], if Man Utd pays you an important amount of money he has to go. It is my club’s vision. It’s my boss, Mr Abramovich, the board. And I share it. I’m not the sort of manager that says - no, not to Man Utd. Sell Mata to Juventus or Barcelona but not Man Utd. Chelsea cannot have 20 replicas. I cannot have Fabregas and another Fabregas getting the same salary. If he can’t play I can adapt and put Oscar, say, here.”
This leads me nicely to young English players and Mourinho’s July promise to promote Lewis Baker, Dominic Solanke and Isiah Brown. The importance to England of a greater English representation at clubs such as Chelsea and Man City is huge. I hope for assurances from Mourinho. Can he deliver on his promise? He says he will, but spreads the responsibility around: “Me, their entourage, players, their agents, people around them. But from my point of view as a manager and a coach I think they must be Chelsea players.
“One of the things that stays forever in a manager’s career is the kids that become great. And you were the guy that put him in. That is forever. Varane with me when he was 18 [at Real]. Santon when he was 17 [at Inter]. His second game was against Man Utd in the Champions League. Carlos Alberto scored in a Champions League final, aged 18. These things stay forever. And I don’t believe there isn’t one manager in the football world that doesn’t want to have this.
“Nathan Ake, Kurt Zouma, Andreas Christensen, Lewis Baker, Brown: we have a group of kids, I’m not afraid to play them. But at the same time we want to protect the player.” So would winning the title with four or five homegrown lads be a better achievement than 10 years ago, or now with players signed by the club? Mourinho points out that he is fighting on four or five fronts at the top of the Premier League nowadays, but says: “It should be a moral commitment between the clubs and the country. I feel committed. Nobody is telling me we have a rule where we have to play five English players. But I feel, the difference in quality in the players we have now and the ones we had in 2004 is an amazing difference.
“So we have the material, and we work a lot - give a lot of thought - to what they have to do to become first-team players. Chelsea have in this moment a group of kids who will be Chelsea players. And the English ones: the moment they become Chelsea players they become an option for England.”
One of his most interesting answers was to a semmingly innocuous question about which coaches he most admires. “I think we are in a moment of contradictions,” he says. “Because there is a wave of opinion that says because the knowledge is available for everyone - the distance between you and the knowledge is a click - we have got generations of people well-informed, well prepared.
“I disagree. I feel a lot when I read what people sometimes write, that it’s not like this, because when the knowledge is at the disposal of everybody, some people are in a comfort zone. When the knowledge is not at your disposal, you have to think. And you have to produce knowledge.
“If you want a good training session because you want to coach defence in a low block you have 200 sessions [pointing to the computer, where they are accessible on the internet]. If you don’t have this [the information] you have to produce it yourself. So I see lots of replicas. You got to the fifth division, or Under-10s, the two centre-halves open, the goalkeeper gives the ball to the central midfielder, the central midfielder isn’t technically good, he loses the ball. But they keep going in the same direction. We are in the moment of stability because the knowledge is available to everyone and we have stopped in a comfort zone.”
At his own elite level, he offers a fascinating summary of how he thinks on his feet, adapts, considers the evidence: “I am not fundamentalist in football. What I mean is that in football you have your ideas, you die with your ideas. No.” He is very animated now. “People ask me: what is your model of play? I say: model of what?” He winces when he says it.
“Model of play against who? When? With which players? Model of play what [scrunching his face]?
“I cannot answer to that. Am I too stupid [he lowers his hands to the floor] or am I too smart [raising them to the ceiling]?
“What is that? I don’t know. My model of play is to build from the keeper to Eden Hazard? My model of play is that I have to find where is the weakness of my opponent and where is his strength. Is Diego Costa stronger than this guy [a centre-back]? The model of play. What is that? For me the model of play is the principles I establish with my team as priority principles which give us a certain DNA, but that’s the depth.
“The same thing as ‘a project’. The project has to be flexible. The project is never the same from when we start to when we end. It’s like at my house. You change, I don’t like this door, you change. The windows.
“I prefer my team to press in a low block, but if the opponent prefers to build from the back, and they are fantastic, it gives them huge stability in their game - I’m going to press there. Liverpool wanted to play with Suarez behind the defenders, Sterling the same thing, and Steven Gerrard in front of the defenders. So I go there, I play Lampard on Stevie G, I play my block completely low. I win. And I’m criticised because I [am not allowed to] play that way. So I am the stupid one. I’m not fundamentalist. And I think some people in football are becoming a bit fundamentalist.”
As proof, he picks out Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid as a beacon: “What Atletico Madrid did last year is to admire, because they were champions in a league they can’t win. I was there three years and it’s difficult to imagine another team winning the league, but they won. A huge difference in resources. Real Madrid and Barcelona are in a different dimension. But they based it on that approach - the team spirit, the organisation, the style of play. People used to say - everybody defends, then it’s a long ball to Diego Costa. No. They knew what they were doing.”
Finally I ask him to compare this year’s Chelsea side with the first of his title-winning teams: “I think the team of 2005 had one plus in relation to this team, which was killer instinct. Every time we could kill matches, we killed matches. I don’t remember matches where we had the opponent and didn’t kill. It was a team that never gave a chance to the opponent to survive.
“This team is not there. We are more artistic, I believe. We have better control of the game by having the ball, and by knowing how to move between players - the circulation of the ball.
“This team has more [potential] to be admired by good results but also for a certain style of play. In that team I had guys like Makelele. He knew everything about that [toughness]. These guys are still in that learning process. I think we are going in a very good direction. People like [Arjen] Robben, [Damien] Duff, even Joe [Cole] in his two great seasons with me were people with appetite to kill matches, to finish.
“You don’t see Duff dribbling without a shot. You don’t see Robben attack the space without getting a penalty or shooting. We have some guys still in the line between the artistic side and the objective side. We need to kill more matches.”
So will they, and be champions this season? “Sometimes I think it's part of the players’ DNA. Things that you cannot give to the players. But as a coach I always feel I have the quality to interfere. I can help, I can change. So I try.
“For example, Willian. Willian does fantastic work with the ball and without the ball. I say to him: ‘You have to finish a game of 90 minutes with three shots. It’s not possible you play 90 minutes in the position you play without three shots. Three shots, two assists. It’s such amazing work you do for the team, in the build-up, in the defensive transition. You do such amazing work for the team, but with a little bit of this and a little bit of that you’ll be fantastic.”
A month ago when this interview was set up I thought I may get 15 or 20 minutes of his time. To spend 100 with him was fascinating. I saw his warmth when talking about Hazard, heard ‘buzzword’ coaching dismissed and listened to the challenges he has set to the current team. And how the Liverpool game brought out his ruthless streak. But most pleasing for me was his commitment to bring through English talent from the academy in the coming years.
source
HUGE but incredibly interesting and insightful interview. best manager in the world interviewed by the best pundit in the world ;)
PS: No Gary Neville tag?! :(