The Mourinho Thread

[Special Juan 28,141]

Jose likes to talk...it turns attention to him and not the squad. But sometimes he realy makes Chelsea look stupid. As for now, he has to show his real achievements. He spent over 80mio and we are still 3rd. Do the talking on the pitch.

3rd?

[Namika 922]

Yeah, blame José.

[Alan Partridge 1,124]

You'd think we were having a similar season to United the way the media go on

[BlueLyon 9,359]

3rd?

Right now we are second, City with two games in hand. We depend on Lpool and City if we will be better than 3rd.

[The only place to be 11,313]

I actually respect Cruyff as a footballing mind, but he's completely wrong. Jose goes out of his way NOT to blame his players under normal circumstances and he's actually being fairly honest for once. How many players talk about the special relationship they had with him?

Having said that he's right about Jose only caring about results and I have no problem with that. The 90 minutes in between the whistles being blown is almost incidental to the final result but that doesn't make him short-termist.

[bushman 2,043]

Johann always disliked Jose. Never ever had anything nice to say about him.

Therefore, Johann should be ignored. An excellent player but an idiot as a person.

[Sidzeret 2,257]

Diego Torres on Mourinho:

The presence of a mole at Real Madrid worried Mourinho so much that between 2011 and 2012 he ordered two sweeps of the hotel where the team stayed to search for hidden microphones. The investigations were unsuccessful. The Sheraton Mirasierra was apparently clean.

The control of information was another thing that deeply exercised Mourinho; he assigned a group of people to carry out a daily analysis of everything that the media said about him. Every morning Mourinho received a package containing the summary. His day began at 8am in his office at Valdebebas, studying videos, articles and broadcasts. He realised that he and his colleagues were not the only sources of the content, and that certain things that were being published did not exactly project an image of infallibility.

He began to suspect that there were leaks in his organisation. The proximity of the Clásico ramped up his sense of suspicion. According to club sources, the growing fear of leaks made Mourinho ask the directors to set up a study of the phone records of players and club employees. Some players were warned about this informally, as it was in their interest to be careful about whom they spoke to on their mobiles. The secrecy, however, did not prevent the boss’s intentions becoming widely known. In fact they were obvious in every training session.

At 5pm on 16 April 2011, shortly before Madrid’s home league match against Barcelona, the newspaper Marca reported in its online edition that Madrid would play Pepe in midfield, along with Khedira and Alonso. The team selection was unprecedented: Casillas, Ramos, Albiol, Carvalho, Marcelo, Pepe, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Ronaldo and Benzema.

The 1-1 draw did not help the home team’s title chances but the crowd applauded their team off with a certain relief, Barça’s last couple of visits having ended with scores of 0–2 and 2–6, and filed out of the stadium reasonably content. Not so Mourinho.

He waited for the team in the dressing room before issuing a torrent of accusations and insults that distorted his face until he began to sob loudly: “You’re traitors. I asked you not to speak with anyone about the team selection but you’ve betrayed me. It shows that you’re not on my side. You’re sons of bitches.

“The only friend I have in this dressing room is Granero . . . and I’m not even sure that I can trust him any more. You’ve left me all on my own. You’re the most treacherous squad I’ve had in my life. Nothing more than sons of bitches.”

Casillas did not wait for the outburst to finish. He pretended that nothing was happening, turned around and went to the shower; he was not the only one who ignored the commotion. But Mourinho was filled with such intense emotion that he grabbed a can of Red Bull and hurled it against the wall. It exploded and drops of the sugary energy drink ran down the faces of those nearest to him.

Squatting on the ground — some say he was kneeling — he rattled off a further series of insults, then, getting up, he wiped the tears from his face and announced that he was going to speak with Pérez [Real’s president] and Sánchez [a director] because they would be able to find the mole. He promised reprisals and also made an analogy between martial law and football: “If I’m in Vietnam and I see you laugh at a mate, I’d grab a gun with my own hands and kill you. Now it’s you yourselves who have to look for the one that leaked the line-up.”

For everyone present it was difficult to work out if what they had seen was a real loss of emotional control or a piece of spontaneous theatre. By improvisation or calculation, Mourinho had ensured that everyone had been on edge. The team had been emotionally stirred up and he had adjusted the final details of his grand tactical plan. All his work, all his energy, the planning of more than nine months, were now focused on one goal: to reach a state of ecstasy in the final of the Copa del Rey in Valencia on 20 April.

The days were filled with impassioned talk until finally 20 April arrived. He talked about politics, about nationalism, about the inexorable division between the Castilian and Catalan peoples. He told the players that they had nothing in common with Barça. He knew, he said, because he had lived in Barcelona for many years, and was well aware of the local culture and the education that Catalan children receive. He explained that people like Puyol, Busquets, Xavi and Piqué had been taught from childhood to distance themselves from Spaniards such as Casillas, Ramos and Arbeloa.

He insisted that his players were wrong if they thought they had made friendships with the Barça players over their years together in the Spanish national team. The Barça players were not their friends because they took advantage of this supposed friendship by betraying the Madrid players, trying to snatch their prestige from them through their manipulation of the press.

They, the Madrid players, were not to participate in this charade any more. They must accept their role as bad guys and should refuse to acknowledge their rivals. Mourinho warned his players that if he saw any of them shaking hands outside of the formalities of the game they would be turning their backs on him — and on their team-mates. Anyone making any such friendly gesture towards the opposition ran the risk of becoming something very much like a traitor.

• The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho by Diego Torres, translated by Pete Jenson (published by HarperSport on April 10 for £12.99). To order for £10.99 including free postage visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call The Times Bookshop on 0845 2712134

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/article4055969.ece

-->Diego Torres

[HD3D 1,038]

You can't help it but feel sorry for this Diego Torres guy. He first published a book attacking Jose containing a completely made up and ridiculous story of him crying and calling everyone desperate because he wasn't hired for Manchester United. He made 1 or 2 headlines with that book but no one actually believed him because the amount of personal attacks the book contained on Jose, made it clear that this was definitely not the work of an unbiased and professional journalist. Also, he couldn't get Mourinho's attention back then.

Now he's back at it with yet a new book once again obsessively trying to force Jose into giving him attention. I would be willing to bet this is the type of sick fanatic who keeps pictures of Mourinho everywhere around his house. I mean, to spend a considerable amount of your life's time writing TWO books about a man that you clearly hate, that can't be normal.

[communicate 2,703]

Jose likes to talk...it turns attention to him and not the squad. But sometimes he realy makes Chelsea look stupid. As for now, he has to show his real achievements. He spent over 80mio and we are still 3rd. Do the talking on the pitch.

Jose likes to talk...it turns attention to him and not the squad. But sometimes he realy makes Chelsea look stupid. As for now, he has to show his real achievements. He spent over 80mio and we are still 3rd. Do the talking on the pitch.

Cannot agree more, I personally don't really care about all this drama n controversy as long we are playing well and winning.

[BloodIsBlue 291]

I get the feeling he's going to do some really unconventional shit tomorrow...

[The Skipper 20,609]

Cruijf is an idiot, sprouts a lot of crap and thinks every club in the world should be operated like Barcelona.

[HD3D 1,038]

Jose likes to talk...it turns attention to him and not the squad. But sometimes he realy makes Chelsea look stupid. As for now, he has to show his real achievements. He spent over 80mio and we are still 3rd. Do the talking on the pitch.

If you take into account the 55 mil sales of Mata and De Bruyne, that's roughly a 25 million investment by the club this season.

So how about you stop overstating numbers in order to make it appear as if Chelsea was somehow expected to dominate this season, when you very well know that's a lie?

[boshman 1,073]

7 League titles in 4 different countries

6 Domestic cups in 4 different countries

2 Champions Leagues - one in 2 different countries

1 UEFA Cup

Countless personal awards

And his managerial record (as per wikipedia)

Played - 678

Won - 456

Drawn - 133

Lost just the fucking 89!!

Which gives our dear Jose a win % of 67.26!

'Let the haters hate' and all that bollocks

Nuff' said.....

[darrus 422]

Cruijf is an idiot, sprouts a lot of crap and thinks every club in the world should be operated like Barcelona.

Also there is a fun fact. When Robson came to Barcelona, one of the first things he did was to sell Jordi Cruyff, and did so at Mourinho's advice. Makes you wonder if there are some grudges held.

[HD3D 1,038]

Well, they are not laughing now.

[duo11bluecl 207]

Great work tonight, if it was under AVB we would have never done it.

[YankinBlue42 72]

Thought putting Ba out there first was the better move instead of Torres. Ba, for all his faults is still a bit of a goal poacher and that's exactly how we scored the winner. Mourinho will get and deserves a lot of credit for putting all of our strikers out there when we absolutely needed a goal.

[Y123CFC 69]

The love I have for this man is unreal, best manager in the world! We are extremely lucky

[darrus 422]

For everyone who claims Mourinho is extremely defensive-minded - we played with 3 strikers today when we needed to score.

[didierforever 7,349]

take that u fucking cunts. now doubt him. come on!!! go on!!!! say.... fucking wankers.