The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho (20 page)

On the tactics board this system was not designed to gain Madrid a great deal of possession. Mourinho thought that if a team reduced the amount of possession they had they also reduced the possibilities of making a mistake in possession, passing the risk of error on to the opposition. Madrid would sit back and wait, provoke an error from Valencia by pressing in low-block, and would then hit them on the counter-attack at maximum speed without squeezing the pitch and keeping the defensive line close to Casillas. They would try to finish their move as quickly as possible, getting the ball far away from their own goal and trying to prevent Valencia from anticipating them in midfield. If they lost the ball, ideally this should be close to the opposition’s area, where Khedira and Lass would press the Valencia players to force another error so they regained the ball and could mount another attack.

Ramos and Pepe set the defensive line close to the area. When the team started their moves, the two centre-halves would weigh anchor. Alonso, the deepest point of the triangle, held his position. The highest points – Lass and Khedira – began to move forward step by step, covering the space generally occupied by three or four players, but trying not to get involved in the development of the move, at least not unless the ball rebounded into their paths. Then they would react by trying to penetrate the area or shoot from outside the box. Alonso gave possession out to the wings, looking for Özil, Marcelo and Ronaldo, or would bypass the midfield completely and pass directly to Benzema, who, backing into the opposition’s central defenders tried to force them back. Lass and Khedira joined in the moves until Valencia won the ball back, when they immediately began the high pressing, trying to stop Albelda and Tino Costa from playing their first passes. Di María closed off the right flank and Özil helped the midfielders press, with Benzema pursuing the central defenders. The objective was to provoke another mistake as Valencia came out with the ball, and hit them on the counter-attack again. If Valencia were able to string three passes together then everyone had to retreat to the original position in front of the defence.

If results are the best measure of things, the operation was a success: Madrid won the game 2–3. Valencia wore themselves out trying to string passes together, unable to give continuity to their play, and were exposed on the counter-attacks. The Madrid players did not know to what extent they should attribute this to the actions of Alonso, Khedira and Lass, or simply to the absence of Éver Banega, Valencia’s best passer of the ball. According to the statistics, the
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did not seem to have given Madrid much advantage. Analysing the games they have played since the 2010–11 season with this system, the results are inconclusive. With the
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they conceded on average a goal a game, and with just two defensive midfielders they conceded 1.4 goals a game. With the
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, however, the opposition seemed to get closer to Madrid’s goal, with an average of 12 chances, and only 10.6 without the
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. But the number of goals scored dropped dramatically: 1.4 goals per game with three holding midfielders, compared with 2.3 with just two.

Although Mourinho wanted to establish his ‘triangle’ as the team’s standard system, there were two things that prevented him from doing so. First, the majority of his players did not believe in it. The most sceptical group was headed by the Spanish contingent, but also included Higuaín, Özil, Benzema and Ronaldo. Second, a large part of both the media and the supporters saw it as a step back to the conservative approach promoted by many during the post-war period. In an attempt to preserve his plan, the manager sought to dampen dissent. After the game at Mestalla on 22 November he gave a press conference in which he defended the worth of his idea:

‘We have to invent another term because I don’t think “
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” reflects well on how the team has played. The team has played with these three players, but the team has been very offensive. We have pressed very high up the pitch with the three of them. Lass and Khedira both ended up in goal-scoring positions. Khedira even scored, albeit in an offside position. Both players played very high up the pitch and for this reason “
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”, which has such defensive connotations, deserves to be identified another way. This triangle was a “very high-pressure triangle”.’

As usual, the preparations for the visit of Barcelona, set for 10 December, dominated life at Valdebebas. On a propaganda level – and in light of the fact that they topped the league by six points – Mourinho ordered everyone to hold fire; whatever they heard, whatever the provocation, his players were forbidden from talking about anything that had any connection to Barcelona. Nor could they discuss referees, nor match scheduling – ‘nothing about nothing’. The explanation was simple: there was no need to rouse the enemy.

As for the way the team were going to play, Mourinho was worried about the feeling of honour felt by the Spanish players, the belief that whoever gave up possession was some sort of a coward. To rebuff this perceived prejudice he gave a series of team-talks in the weeks leading up to the game that were designed to instil in his players the idea that courage was just as intrinsic in those who defended in their own half. In one of these talks he said the following:

‘If you, in a certain moment of the season, seeing the qualities of the opposition, see that you have to be more defensive, this doesn’t mean that you’re the more cowardly, nor the more brave. What it means is that you’re the more intelligent. Because in the end he who is more defensive can end up doing more damage; in that sense he who is more defensive is more offensive.’

At this moment, Mourinho’s relationship with Ramos and Casillas was going through its most bitter period. The Madrid players looked at the front pages of
AS
and
Marca
every morning, and if they saw that Casillas and Ramos were making the headlines they could predict the mood of the boss: ‘cold, with rain probable’. Of the two, Ramos tried to be the more communicative. Casillas ignored Mourinho and could barely stand Silvino Louro, the goalkeeping coach. His team-mates saw how angry he had been made by the prospect of receiving Barcelona from the vantage point of a trench.

‘The thing is, at the Bernabéu you don’t have to be afraid of anybody,’ he said.

For the first time since 2001–02 Casillas went two games in the Champions League without featuring in the starting line-up. For the last two matches of the group stages Mourinho had replaced him with Adán. The captain knew that they were trying to make life difficult for him.

The week before the 10 December
clásico
Mourinho trained with a 4-3-2-1 formation, Alonso, Khedira, Lass and Özil all featuring in the team. An injury picked up by Arbeloa had enabled him to put Coentrão at right-back. Mourinho announced the line-up at the hotel on the evening of the match: Casillas, Coentrão, Pepe, Ramos, Marcelo, Özil, Alonso, Lass, Di María, Ronaldo, and Benzema, with Khedira being sacrificed. Everyone was given precise instructions, the most complex, as always, being given to Özil, the player he doubted the most.

Instead of organising the team to play around the German, Özil was an integral part of the machinery set up to force the opposition into making errors, as if he were merely a substitute for Khedira. The list of demands placed on him proved overwhelming: if Barcelona started a move from the back, the midfielder had to support Benzema in pressing their central defenders; if they channelled the play to the wings he was told to close down the advancing full-backs, working with Ronaldo and Di María, according to which area of the pitch he found himself in; if Barcelona were still pressing forward, he was to place himself between Lass and Alonso, who in turn were under orders not to lose their position and form a defensive block of six men in front of Casillas.

Benzema made it 1–0 in the first minute and Madrid retreated in an attempt to reproduce what had happened at the Mestalla. But Özil was not Khedira and Barça were not Valencia – Piqué, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta and Fàbregas did not squander possession so easily. The more they moved the ball around, the more tired Madrid became, and in the second half Madrid became exhausted. As on other occasions, Guardiola’s team ended up imposing themselves and won the game 1–3.

At the end, in response to somebody asking him why he had not deployed his ‘high-pressure triangle’, Mourinho suggested that his plan had not worked because Özil had been unable to perform the job normally done by Khedira:

‘I decided against it because we were playing at home, we wanted to win, because we wanted to be more offensive and because I thought that Özil could give me a very good performance playing at home.’

Tensions grew once more. The finger Mourinho pointed at Özil was also a message to the group – led by the Spanish players – that most backed the German from within the squad. The Spanish, for their part, picked out Coentrão as being at fault for all the Barcelona goals. They said that for Barça’s first goal he forgot to push up, playing Alexis onside; for their second his clearance only got as far as the edge of the box, turning into an assist for the opposition; for Barça’s third, that he allowed himself to be tricked by Fàbregas. Above all, however, they blamed him for Barça’s first, when Messi accelerated away from the centre-circle, skipping his way over 30 yards of
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territory with ease. The Argentinian burst past Özil, bypassed Alonso and, hand-brake applied and head up to see what best to do next, with Lass arriving late, the ball reached Alexis, who was being played onside by Coentrão. The best efforts of Pepe to see off pending disaster were futile.

The defeat marked one of the most depressing periods in the relationship between Mourinho and his players. After Christmas, Madrid played Málaga in the cup and let in two goals from set-pieces in the first half. At half-time in the dressing room an indignant Mourinho for the first time threatened to use the media against them.

‘I’m going to give names to the press,’ he said.

Casillas’s team-mates used to criticise the captain for being too phlegmatic. It was precisely when a problem needed his intervention that he tried not to get involved, and far less express any anger. That night, however, they say that Casillas went for the manager. He was fed up with Mourinho for breaking what he considered to be a ground-rule of their relationship, upset that Mourinho – behind his back – appeared to be blaming him for one of the goals. A little later Mourinho entered the press room to give the first of a long series of observations that, as well as being critical, contained an element of hostility against his own team.

‘In the second half the team wanted to clean up the mess it made in the first half … At half-time I said to the players it’s a shame that I cannot make 11 changes because, if I could, then I’d have changed the entire team. I was very clear with them so that they understood exactly that I didn’t want to point the finger at any one individual. Far from it! A break [for Christmas] is always a break. There are people who interpret it as holidays – a time when they can relax, enjoy themselves, travel, go to eat at their father’s house, at the house of their uncle, their aunt, their grandmother. And they don’t stop eating and drinking during Christmas. And perhaps they come back here a little bit different.’

Mourinho had never shied away from scathing criticism. But in none of his previous clubs had he been so cruel in public towards his own players. Now the disapproving outbursts included not only his technical comments but also his contempt for the professional integrity of his players. That demonstration of vitriol against Pedro León, something many saw as an isolated incident, began to become the custom from 2012, Mourinho now a coach whose frustration was palpable. The New Year Málaga diatribe was not spontaneous. Like almost everything he did it was calculated, a product of his obsession.

At the turn of the year he did what he tended to do when he found himself in a difficult situation; he called his agent to come up with an escape plan to get away from the blaze that would soon envelope them. At Gestifute the two of them started to spread stories about what really bothered Mourinho. First, that the relationship he had with the squad was intolerable; second, that the club had not given him all the power he wanted, denying him control of the youth system; third, that his way of playing did not make the supporters happy and that the Bernabéu would end up getting on top of him. With his mind set on a way out of the club, an order of preference was established: Manchester United, followed by Chelsea and Manchester City, then Tottenham and even Arsenal, taking into account the fact that Mourinho’s wife would rather live in London. As a point of principle, they made it clear that he would accept any offer from United or Chelsea to leave Madrid. If either of those two clubs did not open the way for him he would study other offers, should the situation at Madrid deteriorate and he did not win a trophy.

Mendes started talks with Manchester City and with Chelsea. Roman Abramovich, owner of the London club, recognised that he needed someone to put things back in order after the team’s disastrous spell under André Villas-Boas. He also made it clear that his priorities were Guardiola, Joachim Löw and Guus Hiddink. When the rumour began to circulate that Chelsea wanted Guardiola, Mourinho became so anxious that for several weeks he was on the phone to his agent at all hours. Mendes tried to distract him, saying that it was an invention of the press. But he knew the truth. Abramovich had offered Guardiola €15 million net per season. Guardiola remained silent and, as Abramovich needed to close the signing with a degree of urgency, Mendes played the ‘ultimatum’ card. According to sources at Gestifute, he let Chelsea understand that if they did not make him a firm offer before 25 February then Mourinho would be staying at Madrid. The date passed and Chelsea said that they did not want to take such an important step at a time when they were still in the Champions League. Their win over Napoli had put them in the quarter-finals and they preferred to wait.