The Mourinho Thread

[Laugh1ngMan 393]

Watching the champions league games this week, they just confirm my opinion of the strategy Mou uses in big games.

In the end it is about getting results and you use the tactics that will most likely get you the positive results. Mourinho would have been bashed to hell if he played like any of the teams that lost.

Yes, it's nice if you can play 'entertaining foorball' getting the right kind of results but we have got to be realistic about the state of our team. Last season we were in a transition period and we made excellent changes in personel in our team to transition into a premier league winning team. But when we are comparing ourselves to the likes of Real Madrid/Bayern Munchen etc. it's obvious we are still one step beneath them. But if Mou is as diligent in his recruitement as last year we should be closing the gap even more and we'll come closer to the kind of football some of the critics are looking fore.

[zolayes 14,489]

Watching the champions league games this week, they just confirm my opinion of the strategy Mou uses in big games.

In the end it is about getting results and you use the tactics that will most likely get you the positive results. Mourinho would have been bashed to hell if he played like any of the teams that lost.

Yes, it's nice if you can play 'entertaining foorball' getting the right kind of results but we have got to be realistic about the state of our team. Last season we were in a transition period and we made excellent changes in personel in our team to transition into a premier league winning team. But when we are comparing ourselves to the likes of Real Madrid/Bayern Munchen etc. it's obvious we are still one step beneath them. But if Mou is as diligent in his recruitement as last year we should be closing the gap even more and we'll come closer to the kind of football some of the critics are looking fore.

sorry but we aren't one step below them .. We are a LEAGUE below them ..a top 4 of Barca RM Bayern and AM are going away from us .

[Laugh1ngMan 393]

sorry but we aren't one step below them .. We are a LEAGUE below them ..a top 4 of Barca RM Bayern and AM are going away from us .

Naaah, you really think Mou would be withouth a chance in any game against those 4? As much negativity you have towards him/his tactics, the one thing you have to concede is that he always will have a decent chance to win agains them, like Atletico Madrid under Simeone.

Not by playing at their game ofcourse but definetly by playing ours.

But whenever you come to the realisation that we are not at the same level as the top tier teams yet, you can't blame the 'negative tactics' he uses. It's the only way you can get results at times. Look at Man City/Arsenal with their righteous way of playing!! They are naive and getting nowhere.

[Tomo 21,751]

Naaah, you really think Mou would be withouth a chance in any game against those 4? As much negativity you have towards him/his tactics, the one thing you have to concede is that he always will have a decent chance to wint agains them, like Atletico Madrid under Simeone.

Not by playing at their game ofcourse but definetly by playing ours.

But whenever you come to the realisation that we are not at the same level as the top tier teams yet, you can't blame the 'negative tactics' he uses. It's the only way you can get results at times. Look at Man City/Arsenal with their righteous way of playing!! They are naive and getting nowhere.

That's been the key difference between Mou and Greenie.

Mou realised the form was dropping so prioritiesed the results, Pellegrini hid behind his 'style' and City have completely bombed.

Im quite clearly in the minority but I just don't see the appeal of a purist in charge of our club.

[Jase 43,479]

It's kinda scary to see how similar Mourinho and Simeone are in regards to their style of play and management in football.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

It's kinda scary to see how similar Mourinho and Simeone are in regards to their style of play and management in football.

His players are even more aggressive... Scary

[stroey 2,525]

It's kinda scary to see how similar Mourinho and Simeone are in regards to their style of play and management in football.

Simeone had a short traineeship of one week at Mou's Inter. His Atletico does looks like Mou's Inter.

[Iggy Doonican 4,186]

José Mourinho, the anti-Barcelona, stands alone in modern football

The Chelsea manager is close to seeing his team win the Premier League but of everyone involved in the Barça team in the 1990s, from Pep Guardiola to Julen Lopetegui, he is the outcast who now revels in his role as the dark lord
• Sid Lowe: Barça’s philosophy makes them coaching incubator for top clubs

A Barcelona fan with a cardboard mask of José Mourinho. Photograph: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

Jonathan Wilson

Thursday 23 April 201512.20 BST Last modified on Thursday 23 April 201512.48 BST

Modern football was invented in Barcelona in the mid-90s. Of this season’s Champions League quarter-finalists, four sides are managed by players who turned out for Barça in 1996: Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Julen Lopetegui and Laurent Blanc. Within a couple of years, they had been joined by Frank de Boer and Phillip Cocu as well as the coach Louis van Gaal and his assistant Ronald Koeman. In slightly differing ways, the eight are apostles for the Barcelona way – or, more accurately, given the influence of Ajax on that style, the Barçajax way. However, there was another presence there, initially as a translator and then as a coach. In the Barçocracy of modern football, there is a fallen angel.

In the modern world, at least at elite level, José Mourinho stands alone. At the greatest coaching seminar the world has seen, when the game as we know it was shaped, but he did not draw the same lessons everybody else did. The other eight espoused the proactive, possession-based football seeded at the club by Vic Buckingham, developed by Rinus Michels and taken to new levels by Johan Cruyff.

Mourinho, however, was different. Mourinho believed in reactive football. He was the outsider, the outcast who now revels in his role as the dark lord. Saturday’s game against Manchester United was typical. Others, playing at home in a match that could effectively ensure the title, might have felt compelled to attack. Mourinho fielded Kurt Zouma, a central defender, in midfield, sitting deep and won the game with 28% possession.

Mourinho may have objected to Diego Torres’s biography of him but the passage describing his methods against the better sides was as true of Saturday’s win as it was of the victory over Liverpool that determined the destination of the title last season:

1. The game is won by the team who commits fewer errors.

2. Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition.

3. Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it’s better to encourage their mistakes.

4. Whoever has the ball is more likely to make a mistake.

5. Whoever renounces possession reduces the possibility of making a mistake.

6. Whoever has the ball has fear.

7. Whoever does not have it is thereby stronger.

It’s true that earlier in the season, Chelsea were more expansive. When Diego Costa, Cesc Fábregas and Nemanja Matic were fit and in form, they attacked and racked up goals. The talk was all of how, after the regular failures to break down massed defences last season, Mourinho had taken decisive action. As the squad has tired and form has waned, as the finish line has approached, though, he has reverted to type. Chelsea have been struggling for form and consistency all year and yet, in the 12 league games since the 5-3 defeat by Tottenham on New Year’s Day, they have conceded only seven goals and dropped only six points.

There was a concern earlier this season that Mourinho might be losing his touch. Against Manchester City (home and away), United (away), Southampton (away) and PSG (home and away), Chelsea took the lead, sat back and ended up conceding equalisers. It could even have happened on Saturday, Falcao hitting the post with 11 minutes remaining. However, even if Chelsea have been unusually vulnerable at times in a lead this season, Mourinho hasn’t changed – and it could be argued that Saturday was vindication.

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From right to left, the then Barcelona manager Louis van Gaal, assistant coach Ronald Koeman, keepers’ trainer Frans Hoek and assistant trainer José Mourinho during a friendly in Amsterdam in 1999. Photograph: VI-Images/VI-Images via Getty Images

Anyway, the sense is that it’s not entirely a matter of utility: Mourinho has his sides play that way because he enjoys it. Cast out from Barcelona, overlooked by them when they appointed Pep Guardiola in 2008, he is now the anti-Barcelona, determined, like Milton’s Satan that, “glory never shall his wrath or might; extort from me,” vowing “To wage by force of guile eternal war, irreconcilable to our grand Foe.” Every defensive performance, every win with limited possession, is a blow against Barça.

There’s probably no game Mourinho has enjoyed so much as Internazionale’s Champions League semi-final second leg at the Camp Nou in 2010, when his side, down to 10 men for more than an hour, had only 19% possession and lost 1-0 to win 3-2 on aggregate. Who needs the ball?

Mourinho is not a pragmatist in the way that, say, Fabio Capello is, changing approach according to his players and, where necessary, adopting reactive, defensive tactics. Rather his preferred way of playing is reactive, which is why he sold Juan Mata. He may have been Chelsea’s player of the season in each of the two previous years but he had no place in Mourinho’s conception of football.

The paradox is that if Mourinho really has allowed his philosophy to be defined in opposition to Barcelona – he is that which they are not – then he is still allowing Barcelona to dictate terms, creating a dichotomy where there could be multiplicity. It is not that there is the Barçajax school and Not-the-Barçajax school; it is that the Barçajax school is one way of playing among an almost infinite variety, as represented by Jürgen Klopp, Carlo Ancelotti and Diego Simeone among others.

And that, of course, is testimony to the astonishing influence of Barcelona over modern football. Mourinho cannot escape his upbringing as a coach; even as a rebel, it is Barcelona he is rebelling against

[Jase 43,479]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hQuZ35q2c

[mikeholiday 209]

Good read.

Yeah i definitely saw Jose puking a few times : when Schurrle scored against Burnley, the tiki taka goal at Palace, and the 5-3 win over Everton.

[ILoveLamp 270]

Good read.

Yeah i definitely saw Jose puking a few times : when Schurrle scored against Burnley, the tiki taka goal at Palace, and the 6-3 win over Everton.

FYP

[Adnane 1,101]

The whole first half of the season was great in terms of the football we played.

That's the biggest advantage we supporters of Chelsea should have : hybrid.

We are willing to see our team dominate England and join the BRB as the top 4 clubs in the world, but we don't care if at times we need to concentrate more stoping the opponents if that's what wins us titles.