Jose Mourinho and the art of modern elite level football management

Soldato
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Disclaimer: I am a Man U supporter of 30 years

Poor old Jose is taking a fair amount of stick recently particularly around his individual style of management. It strikes me that much of this comment from various sections of the media is just what you get when you employ someone like Jose and you are in one the most high profile roles in club management but some of the opinion from ex-pro pundits seems very superficial in its assessment.

There are a few things I don't like about Jose. At times I think he shows a lack of class. Someone as successful as he has been should in my opinion have the ability to rise above petty criticisms vs responding in the somewhat self obsessed and sullen approach we see.

However, it cannot be denied that he is one of the best coaches of his generation, having enjoyed success at every club he has managed. I also massively respect that he has done this in four different European leagues. The guy clearly knows how to win football matches and enough of them to ensure the respective clubs trophy cabinets never need to make their resident "silverware polisher" adhere to a zero hours contract.

What prompted me to start this thread was the recent outcry over the public criticism of several of the playing staff at Man United. On the surface of it this seems an unusual tactic in the sense that modern convention is that this is not the done thing. "praise in public, criticise in private" etc. For me Jose as the manager has the right to handle these matters as best he sees fit. His track record should afford him the respect to coach how he feels is appropriate - after all he will be judged on results. One thing that he does have extensive experience of is working with World level players. He will know what it takes to get tot he elite level and I suspect that stepping into Manchester united after the (latter SAF), Moyes and LvG era shocked him.

Shocked in the sense that the team had fallen so far from the side that repeatedly won domestic titles and reached the end stages of the Champions League. The team has weakened more significantly than any of their European peers since 2012. He inherited a squad where the highest paid player and captain was in such physical decline that surely it was only media pressure or a contract clause that allowed him to keep his place in the team. Add to that many highly paid newer recruits who had achieved nothing and showed little under Moyes or LvG to suggest they were worthy of the shirt. there was and perhaps still is a malaise at this once great club which needs to be broken.

Great leaders take on those sort of issues vs hoping they will go away. If Jose feels that he needs to publicly shame players who aren't in his opinion showing the application and desire he knows is required to be a great player or a key player in a great team then I get that. There was a thread in GD about the "********* generation" - I can only imagine that this is almost exponentially exaggerated in elite level premier league footballers. Maybe some tough love is exactly what is required. Compare and contrast Christian Ronaldo with say Meshut Ozil. Arguably equally talented but with huge chasm in desire, committment and consistency of performance. it is any wonder that Jose bawled Ozil out when he saw this first hand. Mourinho clearly needs players to show the hunger and desire that he has to win. I am not a John Terry fan but I can exactly see why he was such a key player for Chelsea under Mourinho.

For me I can only surmise that Mourinho doesn't see enough of that characteristic from enough players int he current United squad. He sees potential but his standards are high. He is driven to win (at times lacking humility) but in this business who is valuing humility. Personally I am relaxed about him testing some of the current squad. It's obvious who is responding well to the step up in requirement - Valencia, Bailly, Rojo, Herrera, Mata, Rashford - all showing professionalism, desire and an element of leadership. Whilst a few others are merely seeing out time.

It will be interesting to see how many are still there next season because I suspect that JM is not going anywhere soon despite calls for the end to the player brutality!
 
Caporegime
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It's fine as long as he applies it consistently, which he hasn't at all. It's clear he has it in for some players yet his special child Fellaini can do anything and still get a hug. Hell he got a red card for a headbutt and almost cost us a point and Jose just claimed he hadn't seen it and didn't mention it again. if that had been Shaw or Martial? He'd be straight to the media talking about how terrible their attitude is.

Also this pressuring players to rush back from injury and blaming results on injured players is probably the scummiest thing from a manager I've ever seen in my time watching football. Sad how much of the fanbase has jumped on it and continued attacking these players too.
 
Don
Joined
9 Jun 2004
Posts
46,154
Disclaimer: I am a Man U supporter of 30 years

Poor old Jose is taking a fair amount of stick recently particularly around his individual style of management. It strikes me that much of this comment from various sections of the media is just what you get when you employ someone like Jose and you are in one the most high profile roles in club management but some of the opinion from ex-pro pundits seems very superficial in its assessment.

There are a few things I don't like about Jose. At times I think he shows a lack of class. Someone as successful as he has been should in my opinion have the ability to rise above petty criticisms vs responding in the somewhat self obsessed and sullen approach we see.

However, it cannot be denied that he is one of the best coaches of his generation, having enjoyed success at every club he has managed. I also massively respect that he has done this in four different European leagues. The guy clearly knows how to win football matches and enough of them to ensure the respective clubs trophy cabinets never need to make their resident "silverware polisher" adhere to a zero hours contract.

What prompted me to start this thread was the recent outcry over the public criticism of several of the playing staff at Man United. On the surface of it this seems an unusual tactic in the sense that modern convention is that this is not the done thing. "praise in public, criticise in private" etc. For me Jose as the manager has the right to handle these matters as best he sees fit. His track record should afford him the respect to coach how he feels is appropriate - after all he will be judged on results. One thing that he does have extensive experience of is working with World level players. He will know what it takes to get tot he elite level and I suspect that stepping into Manchester united after the (latter SAF), Moyes and LvG era shocked him.

Shocked in the sense that the team had fallen so far from the side that repeatedly won domestic titles and reached the end stages of the Champions League. The team has weakened more significantly than any of their European peers since 2012. He inherited a squad where the highest paid player and captain was in such physical decline that surely it was only media pressure or a contract clause that allowed him to keep his place in the team. Add to that many highly paid newer recruits who had achieved nothing and showed little under Moyes or LvG to suggest they were worthy of the shirt. there was and perhaps still is a malaise at this once great club which needs to be broken.

Great leaders take on those sort of issues vs hoping they will go away. If Jose feels that he needs to publicly shame players who aren't in his opinion showing the application and desire he knows is required to be a great player or a key player in a great team then I get that. There was a thread in GD about the "********* generation" - I can only imagine that this is almost exponentially exaggerated in elite level premier league footballers. Maybe some tough love is exactly what is required. Compare and contrast Christian Ronaldo with say Meshut Ozil. Arguably equally talented but with huge chasm in desire, committment and consistency of performance. it is any wonder that Jose bawled Ozil out when he saw this first hand. Mourinho clearly needs players to show the hunger and desire that he has to win. I am not a John Terry fan but I can exactly see why he was such a key player for Chelsea under Mourinho.

For me I can only surmise that Mourinho doesn't see enough of that characteristic from enough players int he current United squad. He sees potential but his standards are high. He is driven to win (at times lacking humility) but in this business who is valuing humility. Personally I am relaxed about him testing some of the current squad. It's obvious who is responding well to the step up in requirement - Valencia, Bailly, Rojo, Herrera, Mata, Rashford - all showing professionalism, desire and an element of leadership. Whilst a few others are merely seeing out time.

It will be interesting to see how many are still there next season because I suspect that JM is not going anywhere soon despite calls for the end to the player brutality!

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say other than Mourinho knows what he's doing.

By publicly shaming these players is he hoping to motivate them and get the best out of them? Well history tells us that never happened before with Mourinho and like you suggest, the players he's hung out to dry will either be shipped out or continue to be marginalised next season. Take Shaw as an example - he tried to step up and respond to Mourinho's criticism, what happened? Mourinho continued to humiliate him and question him publicly. As Shami touches on, compare that to his treatment of Fellaini.

So what is he actually achieving by hammering Shaw or Martial every other week? It's easy. He's deflecting the blame from himself for Utd not performing as they should be and he's protecting himself from any backlash from the fans in the summer, if and when he tries to sell them. I've said this over and over, it's no different to his return to Chelsea - because of how his return was billed (he was going to be more attacking etc etc) he knows he has to justify his decisions that go against this billing. The likes of Martial and Shaw were never going to be Mourinho players - he wants Willian's and Azpilicueta's but he knew he couldn't come in and make those changes on day 1. After slating them all season and making it known that it's not his fault but theirs for Utd's poor season it becomes much easier to make them changes now.
 
Soldato
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Let's be honest, the squad is full of freeloaders, they have highest wage bill in the world. It takes a certain type of person to stop the rot and rip out the dying mentality, some people won't agree with his methods but as the op mentioned, his trophy history speaks for itself. There's a reason he's a top manager and the average fan isn't.
 
Soldato
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Leeds
Let's be honest, the squad is full of freeloaders, they have highest wage bill in the world. It takes a certain type of person to stop the rot and rip out the dying mentality, some people won't agree with his methods but as the op mentioned, his trophy history speaks for itself. There's a reason he's a top manager and the average fan isn't.

Speaking of freeloaders. He's just cleared a contract for Lingard (24 years old) to earn a base £75,000 and as much as £100,000... for almost no end product:

Premier league: 16 apps (6 subs) - 1 goal - 2 assists

But don't worry, Martial (19 years old) isn't worth it at 4 goals and 5 asissts, despite being consistently ridiculed in public by his manager.

I'm a United fan, and I don't care what Mourinho has won, his attitude and favouritism is disgusting.

He's got an amazing job, with a huge budget to work with, and he looks miserable every waking moment. I can't see that building a collective positive culture for first team players or future prospects. He's got awful leadership skills.
 
Caporegime
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33,188
Seems like the rather usual Mourinho fanboy type result, getting stick, defend him at all costs.

You seem to be ignoring that since Porto and basically up till his last season at Chelsea, he never, or extremely rarely had a pop at a player. His entire shtick, which fans and media gave him constant crap for, was always defending the players and always blaming anyone and everything else. He took it too far when he started making a scapegoat of the medical staff in that Chelsea game they were dire in and lost. He lost respect of the players and staff around him who knew his attack was completely insane.

Since attacking staff and/or players, look what happened to Chelsea, this isn't something he's done continually throughout his success in the slightest, it's completely against the norm of what he's done.

As for the rest, Moyes bought Fellaini, I think maybe one other player, Fellaini sucked before you got him and since. Blind has been solid under LVG, Martial looked a breakout star, Herrera seems well loved by the fans and that didn't just start this year. Shaw looked great under LVG when he wasn't broken. Suggesting that none of the previous purchases shined at all is disingenuous. Mourinho bought a 90mil was it Pogba, I actually forget how much he cost, and one of the most well proven strikers in europe... who for me got worse the longer he played for Utd. Still good but I think he started the year great and his level dropped under Mourinho rather than improved and frankly considering Pogba's form in the past three years, he has always gone backwards under Mourinho.

As for success, he didn't do much at Chelsea, they were going to win the title under Ranieri if he stayed, they were already a clear second and the team that came first, us, were no where near as good the following year while Chelsea strengthened with their two best players, Cech/Robben, before Mourinho was manager. Inter, existing champs, all serious competition still reeling from match fixing scandals, no opposition, a brilliant defence, he bought Eto'o, Pandev, Sneijder, Milito and added Lucio to an already brilliant defence then anti-football their way to a CL final. A big result, sure, but pretending Inter were dire and he made them brilliant is a stretch.

Real, they spent 220mil the year before he arrived and improved 16 or 18 points in the league, Mourinho took over, spent another 80mil and did 2 or 4 points worse. That team, like Chelsea, just needed a tiny bit of time to gel together though they would absolutely have won the title if Barcelona hadn't been epic that season.

In the same way Guardiola hasn't even noticeably improved City, he destroyed everyone with Barca and Bayern(though not in the CL for them).... so is he a genuinely world class manager, or a manager who happened to take over two teams who could basically not be beaten because the teams were so ridiculously strong? I feel like Mourinho has been in this position since at least the first go round at Chelsea. His main method of improving a team is buying new form every year. First season at Chelsea the second time wasn't great, second season he bought an offence, again, he bought an entirely new offence at Inter.

it's easy to consider a manager great if they are winning things, but the reality is, as with Guardiola, which managers wouldn't manage one league title with a Real that spent 300mil over two years... and why did 90% of the points improvement happen before Mourinho was there? Why did Mourinho get fired from Real after a terrible season that they finished with way less points than the previous manager achieved if he's so damn great. Why didn't he get to a CL final when mostly the same squad managed it twice in three years following that(about to be three times in 4 years). He had peak Ronaldo, yet the team didn't look anywhere near as good as they do now.

Guardiola has taken over a team that were no where near as good as Barca or Bayern, if he can build something special at City, good for him but it will prove a lot. Utd in their current situation is the worst team he's taken over(in their respective leagues) and as yet, they've not noticeably improved at all despite another massive spend. Their home record is embarrassingly poor compared to last year, if Mourinho can't improve this side dramatically in the next couple of years, personally I think it disproves the notion he's a genuinely great manager, just a manager who got lucky in taking over great teams.
 
Soldato
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How much is it down to having the most money? How much is it chequebook management, and how much is managerial genius?

Blend of all of it obviously.

There's a lot of good managers in the world, Mourinho is one of them, whether people agree with his methods is up for debate, he wins trophies though, and that's all people remember really

Speaking of freeloaders. He's just cleared a contract for Lingard (24 years old) to earn a base £75,000 and as much as £100,000... for almost no end product:

Premier league: 16 apps (6 subs) - 1 goal - 2 assists

But don't worry, Martial (19 years old) isn't worth it at 4 goals and 5 asissts, despite being consistently ridiculed in public by his manager.

I'm a United fan, and I don't care what Mourinho has won, his attitude and favouritism is disgusting.

He's got an amazing job, with a huge budget to work with, and he looks miserable every waking moment. I can't see that building a collective positive culture for first team players or future prospects. He's got awful leadership skills.

How much is Romero on? Phil Jones? does it seem alright value now?

Regarding Martial, i would say he's trying to get more from him by not praising him at every moment, everyone can see his ability, he's not playing to that ability though, if youre not performing then why should he praise him? He's trying to eek more out of him because he knows he can go to another level.

he destroyed everyone with Barca and Bayern(though not in the CL for them).... so is he a genuinely world class manager, or a manager who happened to take over two teams who could basically not be beaten because the teams were so ridiculously strong?

Do you live on another planet?
 
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Man of Honour
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He's a very shrewd media operator and in my opinion some of this 'digging out the players' piece is as much about sending a message to the board that he wants funds to replace certain players. There may also be an element of trying to goad a reaction from certain players (i.e. due to CB shortage he really wants one of Jones and Smalling to 'man up' and play through pain for the final month of the season).

Additionally I have seem him adopt a tactic in the past where he almost deliberately comes out with controversial statements to deflect attention away from the players and onto himself. He relishes the siege mentality and he shares the devilsh trait with me that he likes to provide arguments against perceived truisms and rhetoric (e.g. something like "after that 3-0 win you must be pleased with the performance Jose" ... "no it was terrible, we deserved to lose this game. We played better last week and drew. If I could have used more than 3 subs I would have").

Occasionally there are chinks in his armour and I think he mucked up a bit at Chelsea last season with the whole Doctor escapade. He forced her out for something not really that bad rather than diffusing the situation and that may have impacted the dressing room more than he anticipated.
 
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