José "The Special One" Mourinho

[Kev9Inter]

When and what was the last CL knockout match that he won? I remember him doing really badly against Sevilla and even conceding 2 goals against PSG in London while having a man up for Chelsea most of the match (Ibra red).

The last time he won Champions League knockout tie was in the 2013/14 season quarter-finals against PSG

Has failed to win any of his last eight Champions League knockout matches

 

[Wobblz]

Saw some Facebook post stating that he hasn't won a knockout game since April 2014...

 

[n4l]

toast

 

[Glass box]

His situation has become sad. Totally understand why the journalist felt he needs to support Jose, since he looks so humiliated, even makes neutral parties pity him.

 

[andrei]

Mourinho's inadequateness was glaringly obvious to everyone except for brehme and a few others. Spoiler alert - it won't get any better for him or his teams.

Just don't fucking toast the reality! Nearly everyone wanted Mou! I wrote on this forum that I would count the ones who specifically say they don't want Mou. They were no more than 5 or 7 people maximum. The vast majority wanted Jose. Because they are unconditionated funs like Brehme or because a combination of sentimentalism and antipathy toward Conte and his past.
I didn't want Jose, not because I "knew" he is not the same Jose anymore, but because I don't believe in the "recooking the soup". We were in 2019 and not 2009. And 10 years are an extremely long time in a "coach"s life". Jose showed many weaknesses in his last tenures at Chelsea and United.

I know it is a custom to kiss someone ass when he is on big horses and beat him when he is down, but I want him to receive one more chance next year. With players back from injuries and maybe one and two additions. I want to see if he still "has it"! I don't expect Tottenham to win something big next year, but I want to see a good, consistent team with an identity! I hope that, for a person who I and all of us love and respect, but I have my reservations. Mourinho's "golden age" was between 2003-2013. His last CL at Chelsea was his "swan song"!

 

[Jusef]

Just don't fucking toast the reality! Nearly everyone wanted Mou! I wrote on this forum that I would count the ones who specifically say they don't want Mou. They were no more than 5 or 7 people maximum. The vast majority wanted Jose. Because they are unconditionated funs like Brehme or because a combination of sentimentalism and antipathy toward Conte and his past.
I didn't want Jose, not because I "knew" he is not the same Jose anymore, but because I don't believe in the "recooking the soup". We were in 2019 and not 2009. And 10 years are an extremely long time in a "coach"s life". Jose showed many weaknesses in his last tenures at Chelsea and United.

I know it is a custom to kiss someone ass when he is on big horses and beat him when he is down, but I want him to receive one more chance next year. With players back from injuries and maybe one and two additions. I want to see if he still "has it"! I don't expect Tottenham to win something big next year, but I want to see a good, consistent team with an identity! I hope that, for a person who I and all of us love and respect, but I have my reservations. Mourinho's "golden age" was between 2003-2013. His last CL at Chelsea was his "swan song"!

Most of the criticism directed at José Mourinho is with regards to his playing style and the way he is setting up the team to play counter attacking football

If based on those grounds than Conte should also be criticized. Conte has Eriksen but is opting for an extra defender in stead. Conte had Ivan Perisic but preferred to adopt a formation where the only wide players are wingbacks.

Same criticism directed at Mourinho can equally apply against Conte.

Difference is the results and that has a lot to do with Inter’s defence -yes defence - being much better than Spurs backline defence.

 

[CoolMan44]

One of the things with Mourinho is that he doesn't seem able to motivate teams anymore of get them to buy into that mentality. He seems to get into more arguments with specific players as well that the didnt used to before (his time at Inter)

 

[brehme1989]

Once again, there is nothing wrong with Mourinho other than his awful decision to pick teams that do not match his identity but are closer to what his family needs him to be geographically.

When he's happy to be in a football club again and has players who aren't divas, he'll show his real self.

 

[CoolMan44]

Based on what exactly? Majority of players today are divas. Why does Mourinho get exception? He is picking these teams after all.

 

[brehme1989]

Based on what exactly? Majority of players today are divas. Why does Mourinho get exception? He is picking these teams after all.

Majority of players are not divas.

 

[Il Drago]

Marca asked from Mourinho to choose the best line-up of the players he trained. These were his choices:

 

[CoolMan44]

They ask that a lot and he gives a different line up almost every time, like all other coaches

 

[Jusef]

Marca asked from Mourinho to choose the best line-up of the players he trained. These were his choices:

They only surprise appears to be Ozil and Hazard. I thought he would have opted for Michel Essien and either Robben or Joe Cole instead of Hazard.

 

[_OC_]

Some days old, but didn’t see it posted regarding José helping the weakest in our soceities;

With football leagues around the world postponed for the foreseeable future due to the coronavirus outbreak, players and managers have found themselves with plenty of free time on their hands.

One man putting that time to good use is Jose Mourinho, who has been volunteering at a food bank in Enfield, North London.

Wearing a mask, the Tottenham Hotspur manager has been helping charities Love Your DoorStep and Age UK put together hampers of food and other essential items to be delivered to the most vulnerable members of the local community.

"I am here to help Age UK Enfield, Love Your DoorStep Enfield and of course you can donate food, money or be a volunteer," Mourinho said in a video on the charity's Twitter account.

—————

Grande Mou

 

[Il Drago]

Mourinho, tears and defiance: the story of Inter's 2009-10 season

How a manager banded together a collection of gifted rejects with a point to prove then defied history to win the lot

Of all the enduring images from Inter’s triumph in the 2010 Champions League final, one stands apart from the rest. Inside the Santiago Bernabéu, a 2-0 win over Bayern Munich provoked scenes of joyous release: Diego Milito sprinting toward the fans with arms outstretched; Esteban Cambiasso doing laps of honour in Giacinto Facchetti’s old shirt; Javier Zanetti balancing the trophy on his head.

Outside, however, a different story would be told. As Inter’s players bounded on to the team bus later that evening, their manager, José Mourinho, slipped into a separate car of his own. And then he jumped straight out again, running over to hug Marco Materazzi. The two men folded into one another, and wept.

Inter had just made history, becoming the first Italian side ever to win a treble of Serie A, the Coppa Italia and the Champions League. And now we knew that it was exactly that: history. Mourinho’s time with the club was over, he was not coming back.

To examine a great club side through the lens of an individual season can feel like an arbitrary exercise. There is always evolution in any team sport, always carry-over from one year to the next.

Yet Inter’s treble winners of 2009-10 do feel like an exception: less a glorious chapter in their team’s record book than a sensational short story. One that has a clearly defined ending, with Mourinho riding off into the sunset (well, technically staying exactly where he was that night in Madrid), and the Nerazzurri never crowned as domestic or European champions again since.

There is an obvious beginning, too, in the summer transfer window of 2009. Inter signed a host of players who would lead their charge to the treble: most prominently Milito, Thiago Motta, Samuel Eto’o, Lúcio and Wesley Sneijder.

Mourinho arrived a year earlier, steering them to a Serie A title in his first season in charge, but that was a minimum requirement. Domestic success had come easy for Inter ever since the Calciopoli scandal of 2006, which saw Juventus relegated from the top flight, and further punishments handed out to Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio.

There was little evidence in that first season that Mourinho could take this team higher. Inter finished behind Panathinaikos in the Champions League group stage and crashed out in the last 16. He had asked the club for two wingers to recreate the 4-3-3 that served him so brilliantly at Porto and Chelsea, but Mancini and Ricardo Quaresma both failed to live up to billing.

How much of the tactical evolution that came next was planned, and how much a product of circumstance? Mourinho was determined to get Inter pressing higher up the pitch, telling The Coaches’ Voice last year that his goal had been to bring the defensive line forward by 20 metres. The signing of Lucio, a mobile centre-back, was a deliberate step, but elsewhere Inter’s transfer policy appeared to be driven by opportunity.

The Nerazzurri were not eager to sell Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Serie A’s top scorer in 2008-09, but Barcelona made an offer – €46m plus Samuel Eto’o – they could not refuse. With Milito inbound from Genoa, Mourinho now had two prolific strikers instead of one, with money left over for a further headline reinforcement.

Sneijder arrived on 28 August and walked straight into the starting XI to help Inter demolish Milan 4-0 a day later. In a roundabout way, Inter might once again have had Barcelona to thank. The Catalans’ 2009 treble provoked Real Madrid to go out and sign the previous two Ballon d’Or winners – Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká – leaving Sneijder and Arjen Robben surplus to requirements.

World-class players had fallen into Inter’s lap, arriving for a fraction of their true value. This context mattered as much as their talent. These were players who arrived with chips on their shoulders: motivated to prove their former employers wrong.

Tactically, Mourinho made missteps. Inter began with a 4-3-1-2 centred on Sneijder’s individual creativity. It was a triumph at home and almost a disaster in Europe, where its narrowness was repeatedly exposed. They drew their first three Champions League group games and looked to be heading out before five minutes of brilliance from the Dutchman – plus one lucky Milito miskick – turned a 1-0 deficit into a last-gasp win away at Dynamo Kyiv.

Emotionally, though, Mourinho understood how to get under the skin of his players. Eto’o had fallen out of favour at Barcelona in part because he resisted Pep Guardiola’s instruction to give up the centre of the attack to Leo Messi. Yet Mourinho was able to persuade the Cameroonian to do exactly that: moving out to the left wing as Inter adapted mid-season into a 4-2-3-1.

Even then, there were growing pains. For significant stretches of their greatest-ever season, Inter weren’t actually very good. Between 16 January and 10 April, they won five out of 14 Serie A games, with Roma leapfrogging them into first place.

Yet there was a spirit of defiance that overcame any deficiencies. Mourinho was the right manager at the right moment for the likes of Sneijder, Eto’o and Goran Pandev – an inspired January pickup, who freed himself from his Lazio contract after being frozen out by the club’s owner. If these players arrived feeling slighted, then Mourinho reaffirmed that emotion, making out that Inter – winners of the past four Serie A titles – were fighting against nebulous forces of establishment prejudice.

He railed against “intellectual prostitution” in the Italian media, and gestured handcuffs on his wrists as decisions went against Inter in a draw with Sampdoria. So relentless were his attacks on Serie A officials that reports circulated of referees threatening to boycott Inter’s games altogether.
It was all nonsense, transparent distraction, but what mattered was that his players bought in. Sneijder said that he would “kill and die” for Mourinho; Dejan Stankovic said that he “would have thrown myself into a fire”. Eto’o spoke with his actions, filling in as an auxiliary full-back for more than an hour after Thiago Motta was sent off in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final away to Barcelona.

Inter had their share of luck. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull had obliged Barcelona to travel to Milan by bus for the first leg of that tie, where the Catalans slumped to a disjointed 3-1 defeat.

Yet to focus on that would be to ignore what made this Inter team special. The modern history of the Nerazzurri had been one of underachievement, of becoming brittle when pressure was raised. Inter were the team that threw away the league title on the final day in 2002, and who had never threatened to win Europe’s top club competition during Massimo Moratti’s 15-year presidency to date, despite lavish transfer spending.

Mourinho’s Inter upended the stereotype: a side that delivered its best football in the tightest spots. They had Sneijder sent off after 26 minutes of January’s returning meeting with Milan, then their closest rivals in the standings, but still won 2-0.

In April, just when the wheels were threatening to come off their title challenge, they found themselves locked at 0-0 after 75 minutes against a Juventus side that had retreated into a defensive bunker formed of Fabio Cannavaro, Giorgio Chiellini and Gigi Buffon. Maicon smashed the door down with one of the best goals scored anywhere all season.
Then came Camp Nou, Thiago Motta’s red card and Sergio Busquets peeking out between his fingers. How many other teams could have resisted, even with a two-goal advantage, for 62 minutes away at the best attacking side in the world? Things got a little hairy at the end, but Júlio César had only made one noteworthy save before Gerard Piqué broke the deadlock with six minutes remaining. Even then, was he offside in the buildup?

The final against Bayern was more straightforward. Milito scored the decisive goals, just as he had in the Coppa Italia final and Inter’s Scudetto-sealing win over Siena on the final day of the Serie A season. Sneijder provided the assist on the opener – his sixth of the tournament, more than any other player – and launched the counter that led to the second as well. He subsequently carried the Netherlands to a World Cup final, and somehow still finished fourth in the voting for the Ballon d’Or.

Perhaps that was a fitting epilogue – further evidence that nobody gave this team and these players the respect they merited. If Mourinho had returned, he might have used it to reinforce that us-against-the-world mentality. Instead, he never even went back to Milan to celebrate.

“I had not signed a contract [with Real Madrid] yet,” he explained some years later, “but I had already decided. I had turned them down twice before and I couldn’t do it a third time. But I knew that if I went back to Milan that would have changed my mind.”

Materazzi had only started a handful of games that season, but he was a kindred spirit, a player who bought into the Portuguese’s approach absolutely. What did they say to each other in that disarmingly tender moment outside the Bernabéu, when they knew that the adventure was over?

“I told him: ‘You’re a shit’,” recounted Materazzi in an interview with La Repubblica. “You’re going and you’re leaving us with [Rafa] Benítez. I’ll never forgive you for it.’ I did forgive him, though, in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/apr/20/mourinho-tears-and-defiance-the-story-of-inters-2009-10-season

 

[DARi0]

Read again Matrix 2016 statements on Mou, sharing it for the nostalgic ones in here.

Marco Materazzi calls Jose Mourinho 'the best Coach in the world' and reveals the five secrets to his success. His former Inter player chipped in on the discussion, although he prefers to avoid easy slogans.

“How can you talk of the best Coach in the world, when there are four that are more or less at the same level?” Materazzi told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “Jose Mourinho, Guardiola, [Carlo] Ancelotti and [Marcello] Lippi. And, just one step below them, [Antonio] Conte and [Jurgen] Klopp. I can tell you that Mourinho and Lippi are the best, in my opinion, not just because of their self-explanatory results, but because I experienced them from close-up. But I understood who Jose was before even meeting him. We'd just been knocked out of Euro 2008 on penalties against Spain. He didn't have my telephone number and I wasn't [Diego] Milito. It was possible that I was going to leave Inter. And I received a phone text: 'I'm waiting for you so we can start winning together'.”

Matrix was then asked to give the secrets behind the Portuguese Coach's success. “Drive, cleverness, knowledge, experience and empathy.

“Drive: he can multiply energies. I could give you a thousand examples, but one from the Triplete year will suffice: we lost 3-1 against Catania, and the next day he slaughtered us all, from the strongest to the weakest. We look each other in the eye, suck it up and four days later we go to London and beat Chelsea. Mourinho can read your feelings, even the hidden ones, and get inside your mind.

“Cleverness: He presses all the right buttons, not just his player's. I've never seen anyone so scientific in provoking his opponents, so good at making them nervous. But he goes beyond. Sometimes he feeds on the controversy, but he always keeps the team away from that. He's the perfect shield.

“Knowledge: that's what he provides his team with on the subject of their opponents. After working on their tactics for a week, you know it all about them. And you can take to the pitch ready to make your game, and also to break theirs.

“Experience: Mourinho knows how to win because he's done that a lot, and that in turn is because he started winning so early. His secret was to start his career when he was young, with a Coach's mind when he was a simple assistant.

“Empathy: that's the first thing he seeks out with his team, the condition that is absolutely necessary to build a strong group, one that is united and has no cracks. That's what leads you to fight against everything and everyone.”

He was indeed the Special One, because he has dedicated his life and put all his time into nailing down his opponents. However, I think his hunger is not the same any more. Wishing him good luck @ Spurs.

 

[DARi0]

I knew about this and remember couple of people here raging against this idea. Sharing it for newer members, that perhaps did not know about this indiscretion.

Nedved: 'Mourinho wanted me at Inter'

Juventus vice-president Pavel Nedved reveals Jose Mourinho asked him to join their Treble-winning squad, but ‘I’d have followed him to any club other than Inter.’

The conversation occurred in the spring of 2009, when Mou had completed his first season at San Siro and Nedved was about to hang up his boots at Juve.

Mourinho phoned the Czech star and urged him to reconsider his retirement, promising they could together win the Champions League.

“Jose knew that I was terribly attracted by the prospect of the Champions League, because I’d never won it, but his plan did not work,” Nedved told Tuttosport.

“We could not be compatible. I would’ve followed him to any club in the world, but not to Inter. I really could not do that.”

Fucking diving cunt :work:

 

[Il Drago]

Jose Mourinho: “Decided To Leave Inter After Semifinal Win Vs Barcelona Because I Knew We’d Win The Champions League”

Former Inter manager Jose Mourinho has reminisced about Inter’s famous treble winning season which was completed 10 years ago today with the capture of the Champions League.

“I was at my best in my career when I felt at home, where I could feel the emotions of my group, where I was 200 per cent in it with my heart,” he began an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, which appeared in today’s print edition of the Italian daily newspaper.

“That’s why, on May 22 in Madrid, I was content to experience the happiness of others, all the way from Moratti to the people working in the warehouse.

“I had already won a Champions League. I used to think of myself first and then the others: at Inter, it was never like that.

“In a family, when you become a father, you understand that someone is more important than you and that you move into second place.

“Ten years later, we are all together again. Just the other day I spoke to Alessio. In my time, he was the driver. Where and when does it happen that a coach who leaves, ten years later still talks to the driver? Never. That’s Inter for me, this is my people.”

The Portuguese tactician then went on to recall some times during his tenure in charge where he perhaps went a little too far.

“There are other relationships too: I coach, you play. Empathy depends on the ability to accept me as I am. It’s like a puzzle.

“At Inter, there were people waiting for someone like me to complete that puzzle. I’m never fake, I’m original: it’s me, and that’s that.

“I was also harsh, but it was me. Especially after the defeat in Bergamo. I was very violent with the players, right after having told them that they had won the Scudetto of poor performances.

“I understood that I had hurt them, because only afterwards I understood the things that had happened before, and I apologized.”

Next Mourinho revealed that had he returned to Milan with the rest of the team for the celebrations he may have ended up staying in charge of Inter rather than taking charge of Real Madrid, who he has insisted he never had a deal with before the final.

“If I had returned from Madrid to Milan, with the team around and the fans who would have chanted: ‘Jose stay here with us’, perhaps I would never have left.

“I hadn’t already signed with Real Madrid before the Final. Someone said that Real came to our hotel before the Final, but that’s not true.

“I wanted to go to Real, they wanted me the year before. I went to Moratti’s house to tell him and he stopped me from going. I had already rejected Real when I was at Chelsea and you can’t say no three times to Madrid.

“I had decided to leave after the second semi-final against Barcelona, because I knew I would win the Champions League.

“I had prepared Moratti: without words, the temperature of our embrace on the pitch made him understand what I wanted.

“He said: ‘After this, you have the right to leave’. It was correct to do what I wanted, not to be happy. In fact, I was happier in Milan than in Madrid.”

Mourinho then went on to recall how upset Inter’s rivals were upon them completing the feat that no other Italian club has ever achieved and on Marco Materazzi, who stepped up several times that season.

“Our noisy enemies, who then wept, was beautiful. The tremor was stronger than the noise and if you think about it, it’s the same thing.

“When there’s noise, it’s because there is fear. I got out of the car to embrace Materazzi because he was the symbol of the sadness in all of us, and of what a team player must be.

“When the team needed him – Chelsea, Roma, Siena – he was there. I’m a Catholic and I believe in these things. Maybe it was God who put him there against that wall, as the last player I saw.

“By hugging him, I embraced all my players. And I say one thing: it makes me wonder why someone like him – as a coach, manager, warehouse worker, driver, I don’t know – is not at Inter.”

He concluded by stating: “Why did I stop saying that I will return to Inter one day? I know why you are asking me this question, I’m not stupid.”

 

[brehme1989]

“By hugging him, I embraced all my players. And I say one thing: it makes me wonder why someone like him – as a coach, manager, warehouse worker, driver, I don’t know – is not at Inter.”

He concluded by stating: “Why did I stop saying that I will return to Inter one day? I know why you are asking me this question, I’m not stupid.”

Drago, you know our saying about what is meowing on the tiles...? aka, do fish swim?

 

[Il Drago]

Drago, you know our saying about what is meowing on the tiles...? aka, do fish swim?

Of course I do. And I know what you mean. You're right.