They say it’s not what you do or say that people remember you for, but how you make them feel. Jose Mourinho has spent the last few years, lately as manager of Manchester United but before that at Chelsea and Real Madrid, making everybody feel awful. Now, once again, he’s paid the price. Petulant, sulky, seemingly at all times very angry with everything and everyone, United under him seemed hell-bent not just on negating the human spirit, but also crushing it. They were boring to watch, disdainful of flare and, worst of all for this most romantic of clubs, utterly pragmatic (and not even very good at that).
At the start of his career, Mourinho’s approach worked well. Distracted by the one-man firework show he provided on the sidelines or in the media, no one noticed how dull the football his teams played was. And because he was good looking, gloriously arrogant in a Latin way and also the most frightful little yob (his treatment of the impossibly dignified Arsene Wenger was revolting), his various furies were endlessly entertaining. But suddenly, during his second spell at Chelsea (remember the thirteen minute swivel-eyed diatribe on live TV following a thrashing at home to Southampton?), it all went dreadfully flat. Something changed. The public wised up and the game moved on. His act, like his football, came to seem only tedious – an affront to the millions who after a hard week at work tuned in or turned up to watch. ‘Still throwing tantrums, Jose?’ we all wondered. It’s been a decade and a half. Even his players – who he took to slagging off freely in public – appeared to loathe him.
I’ve written before that Mourinho had come to seem like Tony Montana, the mob boss from the film Scarface. Like Montana, his rise was meteoric, defined and propelled by a white hot charisma that burned itself out. From the outside there also appeared to be parallels between the neurotic recluse Montana becomes by the end of the film and Mourinho’s decision to hole himself up for more than two-and-a-half years in a Manchester hotel room, separated from friends and family. Living like that can’t be good for anyone. It didn’t end well for Montana. And now it hasn’t for Mourinho, either.
The pressures of football management must be unimaginable for most of us: screamed at weekly by tens of thousands of people as you go about your work and every decision you make pored over and debated by millions more. It’s a wonder anyone does it for longer than a fortnight. Increasingly, Mourinho has looked lately as if the burden is one he no longer bears as effortlessly as he once did. The skin is sallow and the bags under the eyes heavy. He seems a man in need of a break – a year or five on a beach. Football is meant to be a joyful game, but Mourinho – with his hard stares and mean sneers – appears to have lost his joy. Let him go and find it.
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