Journey into the Machiavellian mind of José Mourinho

BarcelonaIn 1982, José Mourinho was beginning to suspect that he would not succeed as a footballer. His dream was to score goals. But he lacked talent. On every pitch, people said about him that he was just the son of Félix, his father. A man who had played more than 10 years as a goalkeeper in the First Division, in which he had won a cup with Vitória de Setúbal and had played a match with the Portuguese national team. The father was working as a coach at the time and tried to help him. In fact, he even called him up for a Rio Ave match, an act that caused a fight with the president, who accused the father of wanting to nepotistically slot in a son without talent. The fight was so notorious that both the father and the son ended up being fired. To understand José Mourinho's mind, one must understand the wounds, defeats, and frustrations that he carried for many years.

It was precisely his father who told José that he should perhaps start thinking about his future, so in 1982 he entered the ISEF, the Higher Institute of Physical Education in Lisbon, where he would study until 1986. These four years would be key in the creation of José Mourinho the coach. The man who won everything but who leaves a trail of controversy, insults, and quarrels wherever he goes. At the Institute, Mourinho met Manuel Sérgio, his professor of philosophy of physical activities. A man who changed his life with advice he would never forget. "From him, I learned that if you only know about football, you know nothing about being a coach," recalled Mourinho when Manuel Sérgio passed away. "He didn't get the best grades. But he was the one who asked the most questions and seemed the most sure of himself. I believe his great contribution to sport is that he works more on the person than the athlete," Manuel Sérgio had recalled in an interview.

"Mourinho worked very hard. He waited patiently for his moment. He knew how to get close to the right people to keep moving up. He started at the very bottom, when nobody wanted him. All of this marked him," says Luís Lourenço, a Portuguese journalist. The current Madrid coach would explain: "The hardest moment was when the phone rang at home and it was the president of a club firing my father." These experiences gradually conditioned him. Once he finished his physical education studies, he obtained his coaching license and found his first jobs thanks to his father's contacts. He would work as a fitness coach at Estrela da Amadora or Vitória de Setúbal, where his father was a legend. And because he spoke English, he would manage to be hired by the English coach Bobby Robson when he arrived in Portugal. He was looking for someone with knowledge of football and a good command of his language. And his life changed, because with Robson he would enter big clubs like Barça and Benfica.

It was precisely at Benfica where in the year 2000 he was given his first job as a coach. "He had no experience and arrived at the most powerful club in the country, which was living through an era of sporting and economic crisis. And he revolutionized everything. In the first training sessions, he saw that the Egyptian Abdel Sattar Sabry took a long time to tie his boots during practice. So, in front of all the players, he told him: 'Do you know how long it takes you to lace up your boots? Seven minutes. Do you know how many minutes you will play with me? Not a single one'." And that is how he energized a demotivated locker room where Mourinho bet on the youth players from the reserve team to change the mentality of the starters.

"Mourinho works a lot on the psychological aspect. He can drive you crazy to get what he wants. One day he greets you, asks you about your children... and the next day it's as if he doesn't know you. Sometimes I was watching television with my family and he would text me asking what I was doing. He would comment on the program with me and, suddenly, he would stop responding. And you would go to sleep wondering if you had done something wrong," explained John Terry, captain of Chelsea, to the BBC. "He creates moods to motivate the players, mixing love and fear. But he also masters another aspect very well: touching the morale of his rivals, making them nervous," added the English footballer.

Mourinho understood that to win you had to be willing to do anything. And he went on developing his tactics to make his rivals nervous, condition the referees and motivate his players. "Mourinho understood the importance of communicating to the public not to be liked, but to create moods," says Lourenço. He would put tactics into practice especially starting in 2002, when he led Porto to become European champion. Then would come Chelsea and Inter, where he would continue winning. And causing scandals. "He is a communicator who is liked by his own, but his rivals can't stand him. He knows how to make rational opponents lose their cool. He protects his players by talking about referees and conspiracies against his club, aware that he needs a strong unit," says Sandro Modeo, an Italian journalist. Mourinho's roadmap, in fact, is usually always the same: the referees always help the rivals, the Federation sets the worst schedules for his clubs, he can personally attack opposing coaches, and he knows how to make theatrical plot twists, like when he waited for referees in the parking lot, when he asked himself the "why" behind Barça winning in Europe, or considered that Messi was doing "good theater".

All the players who have worked with him speak of a coach who prepares things thoroughly, surrounded by a top-level technical staff, but one that is very hierarchical. Everyone must listen to him. A man who in recent years has seen other coaches surpass him with better results. And he is looking for how to win again, without ceasing to be that provocative Mourinho who tries to anger his rivals, as he did with the famous image from the Madrid derby: when he used the printer he always asks to have with him to print photos of the actions that, according to him, deserve a red card in the derby. A new plot twist that has managed to get the most radical Madrid fans to applaud him. Others, however, are already doubting. Mourinho's verbal excesses are forgiven if the team wins. And it has been too long since he has won. When he was young, he learned from Manuel Sérgio that "whoever only knows about football, knows nothing about football." Nowadays, however, people talk more about his press conferences than about the matches. Perhaps he has moved too far away from football.