Diego Torres - The Special One - The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho

Contents Cover Contents Cover Title Page 1 Crying 2 Eyjafjallajökull 3 Market 4 Fight 5 Humiliation 6 Fear 7 Prepare to Lose 8 Rebellion 9 Triumph 10 Sadness 11 Unreal 12 Blue Copyright About the Publisher

Title Page Contents Cover Contents Cover Title Page 1 Crying 2 Eyjafjallajökull 3 Market 4 Fight 5 Humiliation 6 Fear 7 Prepare to Lose 8 Rebellion 9 Triumph 10 Sadness 11 Unreal 12 Blue Copyright About the Publisher Title Page 1 Crying 2 Eyjafjallajökull 3 Market 4 Fight 5 Humiliation 6 Fear 7 Prepare to Lose 8 Rebellion 9 Triumph 10 Sadness 11 Unreal 12 Blue Copyright About the Publisher

1 Crying

2 Eyjafjallajökull

3 Market

4 Fight

5 Humiliation

6 Fear

7 Prepare to Lose

8 Rebellion

9 Triumph

10 Sadness

11 Unreal

12 Blue

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Think of this: When they present you with a watch they are giving you a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a dungeon of air.’

Julio Cortázar, ‘Preamble to the Instructions for Winding a Watch’

‘He was crying! He was crying …!’

Gestifute employee

On 8 May 2013, the employees of Gestão de Carreiras de Profissionais Desportivos S.A., Gestifute, the most important agency in the football industry, were to be found in a state of unusual excitement. José Mourinho kept calling employees. They had heard him sobbing loudly down the line and word quickly spread. The man most feared by many in the company had been crushed.

The news that Sir Alex Ferguson had named David Moyes as his successor as manager of Manchester United had caused an earthquake. United, the most valuable club in the world according to the stock market, were the equivalent of the great imperial crown of football marketing, and the position of manager, occupied for almost 27 years by a magnificent patriarch, had mythical connotations.

The terms of Ferguson’s abdication were the ‘scoop’ most coveted by the traffickers of the Premier League’s secrets. There were those who had toiled for years preparing a web of privileged connections to enable them to guess before anyone else when the vacancy would occur. Jorge Mendes, president and owner of Gestifute, had more ties with Old Trafford than any other agent. No agent had done as many deals, nor such strange ones, with Ferguson. No one had more painstakingly prepared an heir to the throne or succeeded in conveying the idea to the media that there was a predestined successor. If this propaganda had seeped into the consciousness of one man, that man was the aspiring applicant himself. Mourinho, encouraged by his devoted agent, believed that Ferguson was also an ally, a friend and protector. He became convinced that they were united by a relationship of genuine trust. He thought his own fabulous collection of trophies – two European Champion Leagues, one UEFA Cup, seven league titles and four domestic cups in four different countries – constituted a portfolio far outstripping those of the other suitors. When he learned that Ferguson had chosen David Moyes, the Everton manager, he was struck by an awful sense of disbelief. Moyes had never won anything!

These were the most miserable hours of Mourinho’s time as manager of Real Madrid. He endured them half asleep, half awake, glued to his mobile phone in search of clarification during the night of 7 to 8 May in the Sheraton Madrid Mirasierra hotel. He had arrived in his silver Audi in the afternoon along with his 12-year-old son, José Mario, with no suspicion of what was coming. On his left wrist he wore his €20,000 deLaCour ‘Mourinho City Ego’ watch, with the words ‘I am not afraid of the consequences of my decisions’ inscribed on the casing of sapphire crystal.

Mourinho was fascinated by luxury watches. He not only wore his sponsor’s brand – he collected watches compulsively. He maintained that you could not wear just any object on your wrist, stressing the need for something unique and distinguished intimately touching your skin.

That afternoon he was preparing to meet up with his team before playing the 36th league game of the season against Málaga at the Bernabéu. He was more than a little upset. He knew that his reputation as a charismatic leader was damaged, something he attributed to his stay in Chamartín. The behaviour of the Spanish seemed suffocating: the organisation of the club had never come up to his expectations and he was sick of his players. He had told the president, Florentino Pérez, that they had been disloyal, and to show his contempt he had decided not to travel with them on the team bus but make his own way to the hotel in a symbolic gesture that cut him off from the squad. He was met by members of the radical supporters’ group ‘Ultras Sur’, who unravelled a 60-foot banner near the entrance of the Sheraton. ‘Mou, we love you’, it said. When the squad arrived and the players began to file off the bus, one of the fans, hidden behind the banner, expressed the widespread feeling in this, the most violent sector of Madrid’s supporters.

‘Casillas! Stop blabbing and go fuck yourself!’

The suspicion that Casillas, the captain and the player closest to the fans, was a source of leaks had been formulated by Mourinho and the idea had penetrated to the heart of the club. Perez and his advisors claimed that for months the coach had insisted that the goalkeeper had a pernicious nature. When the suspicion was reported in certain sections of the media, the club did very little to rebuff it. The subject was the topic of radio and television sports debate programmes; everyone had an opinion on the matter except the goalkeeper himself, whose silence was enough to make many fans believe he was guilty. To complete his work of discrediting Casillas, Mourinho gave a press conference that same afternoon, suggesting that the goalkeeper was capable of trying to manipulate coaches to win his place in the team.

‘Just as Casillas can come and say, “I’d like a coach such as Del Bosque or Pellegrini, a more manageable coach,”’ he said, ‘it’s also legitimate for me to say the same thing. As the coach it’s legitimate for me to say, “I like Diego López.” And with me in charge, while I’m the coach of Madrid, Diego López will play. There’s no story.’

The atmosphere at the Sheraton was gloomy that night, with contradictory rumours from England circulating about the retirement of Ferguson. The online pages of the Mirror and Sun offered a disturbing picture. Mourinho was certain that if Sir Alex had taken such a decision he would have at least called to tell him. But there had been nothing. According to the people from Gestifute who lent him logistical support he had not received as much as a text message. The hours of anxiety were slowly getting to him, and he made calls until dawn to try to confirm the details with journalists and British friends. Mendes heard the definitive news about Ferguson straight away from another Gestifute employee but did not dare tell Mourinho the truth – that he had never stood the slightest chance.

Mourinho was tormented by the memory of Sir Bobby Charlton’s interview in the Guardian in December 2012. The verdict of the legendary former player and member of the United board had greatly unsettled him. When asked if he saw Mourinho as a successor to Ferguson, Charlton said, ‘A United manager would not do what he did to Tito Vilanova,’ referring to the finger in the eye incident. ‘Mourinho is a really good coach, but that’s as far as I’d go.’ And as far as the admiration Ferguson had for Mourinho was concerned, the veteran said it was a fiction: ‘He does not like him too much.’