The Special One talks exclusively to Duncan Castles at Inter Milan's Appiano Gentile Training Complex (May 16 , 2010)
Jose Mourinho:
The best football coach on the planet. It is an equation so broadly accepted that statistics are no longer cited as evidence. They are worth an abbreviated recap.Should Inter sustain their two-point advantage over AS Roma through a final Serie A fixture at Siena this afternoon, Mourinho will have his sixth league title as a manager. He will have finished top of the table in every full season he has led a club — bar the 2006-07 Chelsea campaign in which Roman Abramovich forced Andriy Shevchenko upon him while refusing to sign a badly needed centre-back.
UPDATE - Siena 0 Inter Milan 1 , which makes Inter Milan the Serie A Champions 2009 / 2010 .
Starting with his first Portuguese title campaign at FC Porto in 2002-03, Mourinho’s teams have not lost a home league fixture for seven complete seasons. Defeat Bayern Munich at the Bernabeu in Saturday’s Champions League final and the 47-year-old will become the youngest man to collect two European Cups as a manager. Succeed in both Siena and Madrid, and Inter will complete a unique treble of Italian Cup, Italian league and European Cup.
“Ah,” he responds when asked if this would constitute his greatest achievement. “In Porto we did it, we won Uefa Cup, championship and Portuguese Cup. And the next year we won Super Cup, championship and Champions League, so we did three out of three.”
A pause. “But this would be an incredible achievement because the level of the competition is so high, and our road to the final was an incredible road. We got Barcelona, European champions, in the group phase. We got [Rubin] Kazan and Dynamo Kiev, champions of Russia, champions of Ukraine. After that we get Chelsea, after that we got CSKA, a little bit of fresh air in the middle of the storm. And after that we play Barcelona again, and always playing the second game away from home, always.
“It was an incredibly difficult way to get to the final, which people sometimes forget. Because of the difficulty of the games, we had an accumulation of yellow cards, and we reach the game against Chelsea already with half of the team a card away from suspension. Players like Lucio, [Walter] Samuel, [Javier] Zanetti, [Esteban] Cambiasso, Maicon, all of them playing this knockout phase and they couldn’t afford to get a yellow card. We went to Barcelona to play the semi-final — and people don’t speak about this — we didn’t concede a free kick, we didn’t give a chance for a referee to award a yellow card and a player to miss the final. [Sergio] Busquets did it for us in a non-fair-play way [by getting Thiago Motta sent off], but okay, it can happen.”
Though Mourinho cheerfully plays up to his “Special One” moniker these days, the impression that it was arrogantly self-devised is askew. Intent on establishing credentials at a sceptical first Chelsea press conference, Mourinho’s prepared phraseology was subtly different. “I’m European champion, so I’m not one of the bottle,” he said. “I think I am a special one.”
As he transformed Premier League football, a miserly 15 goals conceded, and a record points total achieved, both public and media agreed. As imperious in front of microphone and camera, Mourinho’s marketability multiplied. Ahead of the Champions League final he has received hundreds of requests for an exclusive interview, but has granted just two, of which this is one.
We meet in the glass-fronted main room of Inter’s antiquated training centre. A couple of hundred yards to our right are the two new training pitches — one with undersoil heating — Mourinho demanded upon joining the club in the summer of 2008. He enters the room with a smile and an embrace. He is not an interviewee who requires warming up. Question one is about the revolution in Inter’s play — the change from a side outclassed by Manchester United in last year’s Champions League to one that now plays football at a higher intensity than any English side. The answer is fluid and comprehensive. And more than five minutes in length.
“Inter’s history was about going out in the last 16 and always crying after their defeat,” begins Mourinho. “After the defeat in Manchester I was criticised in the Italian press and I was also feeling inside the club my comments at Old Trafford were not very welcome. I was saying in a very objective and pragmatic way, ‘I know why we are out of the Champions League, because they are better than us.’ Where are they better than us? Why couldn’t Inter go through? Why couldn’t Inter go through in Champions League for many years? Why can Inter succeed in Italy and not in Europe? What can we do to improve the team and to find the answer to these questions?
“I went step by step. I cannot play Champions League level without two very strong central defenders. We cannot play Champions League without a specialist in set pieces, because the matches are very, very tight and sometimes you need that man to make a difference. We need a midfield capable of having the ball and controlling most of the matches. We cannot succeed in the Champions League without a striker made for the big moments. Not a striker to score three goals from 15 chances. A striker who is able in two chances to score a goal.
“We work at answering these questions. The club was very open to my ideas, I have to say that. After that we needed just to go over the psychological wall, which was exactly the big moment, the big opponent.
“And that moment arrived with Chelsea in the last 16. When we beat Chelsea, and especially the way we did it, and especially because we did it with two victories and no doubts that we deserved to do it. It was what the team needed; especially some players with years and years of disappointment at Inter. After beating Chelsea they could do it against anyone.”
TALK of his old club brings us to the subject of Carlo Ancelotti emulating his feat of bringing the Premier League title to Stamford Bridge in his first season. Ancelotti’s triumph was achieved with a record number of goals and, some have argued, a side playing more enterprising football than the supposed defensive automata who won with Mourinho in 2005 and 2006.
“People can write what they want,” he responds. “First of all, I’m happy Chelsea did it. I want it very clear I’m happy they won it. They had the record of goals. But please don’t compare this Man United with my Man United. Don’t compare this Arsenal with my Arsenal. My Arsenal was a team that won the league without one defeat in 2003-4. Don’t compare this Liverpool with my Liverpool. And don’t compare this Premiership with my Premiership. Don’t compare because you cannot compare.”
His case is hard to argue with. United have been damaged by Cristiano Ronaldo’s sale to Real Madrid, Arsenal are lost in their attempts to emulate Barcelona, and Liverpool are a self-destructive mess. It is no coincidence that Chelsea took this year’s title with the lowest points total since 2003. Nor does it need Mourinho to point out that Europe’s top scorers this season were Ajax Amsterdam, who failed to win the Dutch league.
“Arsenal won it in an incredible way and after that they thought they could win in a different way,” says Mourinho. “They cannot win it in a different way. Either they go back to where they were or they don’t do it.
“Man United lost Ronaldo. Okay, the coach is a tremendous coach, the team is full of great players, but Ronaldo is Ronaldo, and he scores 30 goals a season. Ronaldo wins points and points and points. When a club and the league loses a player like Ronaldo it loses a lot.
“Liverpool is an incredible phenomenon. From 2004 to 2010 it looks like the team instead of improving is getting worse. Tottenham is coming, Aston Villa is coming, Man City is coming, but I think that magic of a fight of titans, all of them very, very strong in the top of the League, I don’t see this season was like this.
“Chelsea were out of Champions League very, very soon. They could concentrate on the championship — and they did it very well. Carlo is very experienced, he kept the team calm and focused, and he didn’t let them lose focus and confidence. They concentrate very, very well in the championship, and they deserve to win it in the end.”
That Mourinho, unlike Ancelotti or previous Inter managers, has a Champions League final as well as a title race to occupy him has much to do with his overhaul of the squad last summer. Unimpressed by his performances in the big games, he moved Zlatan Ibrahimovic on to Barça in return for €49m and Samuel Eto’o. With some of that cash he took Wesley Sneijder from Real Madrid and Lucio from Bayern. Diego Milito and Thiago Motta were bought from Genoa, and Goran Pandev acquired at the end of a contract dispute.
Simultaneously, Mourinho released a group of thirtysomethings he considered either incapable of or unwilling to adhere to training methods radically different from the Serie A norm. Out went the likes of Adriano and with them went an array of problems.
Mourinho developed a default formation that placed three strikers in a fluid semi-circle around the visionary Sneijder. With a game left to play Inter have scored more Serie A goals than any of the division’s past 10 champions. But the stereotype of negativity still rankles.
“It’s so unfair if somebody thinks that Inter is a defensive team,” he says, harking back to the Champions League. “We played a very difficult group phase very well. After that we beat Chelsea twice, and I don’t remember a team to play like we did at Stamford Bridge. I don’t remember. We play against Barcelona at home, go 1-0 down, then we destroy them and we beat them 3-1. And because of a special game, which is a game to send a team into the final, playing with 10 men, and winning 3-1, people say we are defensive. I think we did it in a fantastic way.
“When I read comments by many real football people they understood how well we played that game and how much credit the players deserve. When I read some comments from some, I don’t want to say stupid people . . . For example, I read a comment from one of the best basketball players in the NBA, Steve Nash. He was saying that Inter could play that game with 10 goalkeepers. Fortunately, he plays basketball. He understands nothing about football.
“A football team is made of balance — I don’t believe in a crazy attacking team, I don’t believe in a crazy defensive team. My Porto had balance, my Chelsea had balance, and we have balance in this team. Football is made about balance.”
There have been times this season when the Portuguese has felt like there has been precious little balance in the treatment of his own team. Frustrated by officiating that has seen linesmen celebrate when Inter dropped crucial points, angered by press criticism, he has sometimes felt like he is competing against a nation. It has not escaped his attention that Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, owns both Inter’s principal rivals, AC Milan, and much of the country’s media.
“It’s easy to love when you are loved. And in England it was a little bit like this. Everybody knew I was in love with English football, with English competition, with English mentality. In Italy it was a little bit the opposite — the same way I was honest in England I’m honest here, and I was saying many, many things in the game I don’t accept, I don’t understand.
“When people get this kind of feedback probably it’s easy for them to not be in love with me. But last weekend, Genoa-Milan: zero spectators, the game closed because of security reasons. What is this? Is this football? Is this war? Cup final in Roma: Inter supporters afraid to go.
“What is this? Is this a cup final? Some decisions in the game, the way they suspend me they don’t suspend other people, the way presidents speak about other presidents, the way managers speak about other managers. This is not my natural habitat.
“I read a few words from Ancelotti a few days ago. He is Italian, he’s saying he’s loving English football, he hopes to stay for many, many years. He’s so happy that he doesn’t have in England what he has in Italy with the whole mess after matches: what television and hidden cameras and people create after the game because of a referee’s decisions. This is not my natural habitat.”
The “good thing” about Italy has been Inter; the thing that will give Mourinho pause for thought when he considers his future employment. Real Madrid are foremost among suitors that have included Liverpool and Manchester City. Mourinho has said he will coach Real in the future without specifying when, just as he has said he will return to the Premier League one day.
Can he contemplate spending another year in Italy? “Difficult, very difficult,” he replies. “But Inter make me feel really well, really loved, and to fight with them one more season I think can be possible, even if I’m not in my natural habitat.
“After [the final] I will think. And after thinking I will make a decision because until now I didn’t spend one second really thinking about my future. I’m not a selfish person, I’m a group man, I’m a club man and in this moment I only think about players, Inter, supporters, championship, Champions League. After the Champions League final I will spend a couple of days thinking about my future.”
One thing is assured. It will be glorious.
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