Saturday evening’s Champions League final demonstrated to the world what many of us already knew: Jose Mourinho is the finest manager in Europe, bar none. His Inter Milan side made a Bayern Munich team look like a bunch of second-raters at times, despite the fact that Die Bayern were riding high after a domestic double and had dispatched of the mighty Manchester United among others on their way to the final. Inter were magnificent. Their defence resolute and compact, their forwards dangerous and clinical. Mourinho, it seemed, had created the perfect balance. An unprecedented treble was Mourinho’s, but as with Porto in 2004, he was unwilling to develop his success, desiring a new challenge. On Monday he will be unveiled as the new manager of Real Madrid. He sees it as his chance to win another Champions League to his mantelpiece, to write his name into the history books: after all his career, he claims, would be incomplete without managing Los Blancos. But will the job prove to be the making of Jose, or could it just break him?
Real Madrid’s huge status has an equally huge pull. Players want to play for Madrid and managers like Mourinho want to coach the team. However, with huge status comes huge expectation. It is hard to imagine another club in the world where a player could score 20 league goals in a season and still be (potentially) forced out the following summer, a fate that may soon become familiar to Gonzalo Higuain. And this expectation is not reserved purely for players; England’s own Fabio Capello was relieved of his position despite winning La Liga in 2006-07.
Mourinho and Capello in fact have a lot in common. Both are willing to sacrifice the beautiful side of football in favour of success, an approach that has seen them pick up numerous medals during their careers. However, the same philosophy is arguably the reason that Capello was forced out of Madrid, and it will be interesting to see whether the efficiency that has been associated with Mourinho’s teams in the past will de evident in his Real Madrid. After all, can Mourinho play expressive, attacking football and still be successful? As yet the jury is out.
It must also be remembered that Mourinho has never worked under the same level of pressure as he will at Madrid, and has never been expected to get results so quickly. His Porto team were experts at exploiting their underdog status and he took over Chelsea at a time when, despite their riches, they had not won a league title for over 50 years. Even Inter, one of Europe’s most respected clubs, winning the Champions League was never obligatory. Mourinho’s whole career has seen him surpass what is expected of him, but never before has the best been expected. And if the special one does have success in the Bernabeu, will he be able to do so straight away, as the fans and Florentino Perez will demand? Inter dropped tamely out of the Champions League quarter finals in his first year and, like any manager, he will require time to make Real Madrid into Mourinho’s Real Madrid. The man himself has stated that he likes to work at clubs for two years for them to reach their peak with him. Time, however, is something that managers in the Spanish capital seldom get.
Finally, we must consider Mourinho’s ego. The self-proclaimed special one, a man who left Chelsea in 2007 arguably due to disagreements with the board: can Mourinho really work with the constant input of Real President Perez? Mourinho may be given control in the transfer market, with Inter full-back Maicon (a defender, as if to prove my earlier point) likely to be his first arrival. However, for all his charisma and brilliance, Mourinho will never have full control at the Bernabeu. He will always be inferior to Perez and maybe even captain Raul in the clubs heirarchy. Will he be able to deal with that, or will we see Mourinho riding off into the sunset after one stand-off too many?
Mourinho will take over Real Madrid. And for the club it is a win-win situation. If they conquer Europe next year, Perez will be hailed as a genius. If they win nothing, Mourinho will be blamed. Taking this job certainly represents a risk for the Portuguese. When he eventually returns to England, as he seems destined to do after his spell in Madrid, will ‘special one’ still be an appropriate title? Let’s wait and see.