The emergence of rising star Varane was the excuse. ‘It’s not easy for a man of 31 years, with a standing and a past, being steamrollered by a child of 19 like Varane,’ said Mourinho. ‘But it’s the law of life.’
Varane could not play in the final because of injury. Even so, Pepe watched the game from the stands, giving up his place to Albiol, who had not played regularly for months. Some of the players believed they recognised in this decision the clearest evidence that part of Mourinho’s selection-process was based on a dark code of loyalty even when it was to the detriment of the functioning of the team.
When the referee sent Mourinho off for protesting, Pepe went down to the bench and, in complete violation of the regulations, installed himself in the technical area. It was unprecedented behaviour as he took over from Aitor Karanka, the assistant coach, giving instructions to his colleagues from the touchline as if he were the manager. Not that it prevented an Atlético victory.
Karanka remained confused all evening. His boss had departed the stage, leaving him alone. Breaking protocol, Mourinho did not go up to receive the medal that King Juan Carlos had prepared to honour the coach of the losing team. Instead, it was Karanka who came up the stairs in front of the defeated players. On seeing him, the king grabbed the piece of silver and turned to the Spanish Football Federation president Ángel María Villar, seeking clarification:
‘Shall I give it to him?’
And so it was an embarrassed Karanka who received the salver, while Mourinho went to the press conference room to pronounce his final words as the official representative of Madrid. Three years of stirring rhetoric, shrill speeches, sessions of indoctrination, warnings, complaints and entertaining monologues were interrupted by a confession. There was no hiding from the fact that in his final year he had won nothing.
Never in the history of Real Madrid had a coach been more powerful and yet more miserable; nor one more willing to terminate his contract with the club, happy to end an adventure that had become a torment.
‘This is the worst season of my career,’ he said.
Chapter 2
‘It is easy to see thou art a clown, Sancho,’ said Don Quixote, ‘and one of that sort that cry “Long life to the conqueror!”’
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
The objective qualities of José Mourinho the coach were not what led Real Madrid to sign him in 2010. It was more that they considered him to be a magical, providential figure blessed with an unfathomable and mysterious wisdom.
Madrid’s director general, José Ángel Sánchez, was the main driving force behind the recruitment and the process took years to reach its conclusion. Perhaps it started in the first months of 2007 when Sánchez made contact with Jorge Mendes, Mourinho’s agent, to negotiate the transfer of Pepe. Képler Laverán Lima, nicknamed ‘Pepe’, was the Porto defender who cost €30 million, becoming the third-most expensive central defender in history after Rio Ferdinand and Alessandro Nesta. It was the highest price ever paid for a defender who had not played in his national team, and the first transaction concluded by Mendes and Sánchez, laying the foundations for a new order. From that moment on the super-agent began to redirect his strategy from England to Spain, those ties of friendship with Sánchez paving the way for the change.
Mendes did not delay building his relationship with Ramón Calderón, Madrid’s president between 2006 and 2009. Bold by nature, the Portuguese agent made him the inevitable offer: he would bring his star coach – at the time, running down his third season at Chelsea – to Madrid.
‘Once you get to know him you’ll not want to hire anyone else,’ Mendes encouraged. ‘If you want to prolong your spell at Madrid, you’ll have to bring in the best coach in the world.’
That is how Calderón remembers it, recalling how Mendes tried to organise a dinner with Mourinho. They promised him a lightning trip to a meeting in a chalet on the outskirts of Madrid in the dead of night to avoid photographers and maintain absolute secrecy. ‘José Ángel was utterly convinced,’ recalls Calderón, who says he looked into the idea with the director general and with Pedrag Mijatović, who at the time was Madrid’s sporting director.
‘This guy is going to drive us crazy!’ said the president. ‘With Mourinho here you won’t last a minute, Pedrag!’
Calderón did not employ any particularly logical reasoning to reject Mourinho. He simply thought of him as a difficult character with outdated ideas. ‘He’s like a young Capello,’ he said, vaguely alluding to a way of playing the game that bored the average fan. The ex-president did not account for the importance of charisma in arousing a crowd eager for Spanish football to regain its pre-eminence. A multitude increasingly in need of a messiah.
Mendes’s capacity for hard work is renowned. He promoted Mourinho in various European clubs when he had still not ended his relationship with Chelsea and continued to offer him around with even greater zeal from the winter of 2007 to 2008. At that time Barça were looking for a coach. Ferrán Soriano, now the executive director of Manchester City, was Barcelona’s economic vice president. Soriano explains that the selection process began with a list of five men and came down to a simple choice: Guardiola or Mourinho.
‘It was a technical decision,’ emphasises Soriano. ‘Football is full of folklore but in this instance you cannot say that it was an intuitive choice. Instead, it was more the product of rational and rigorous analysis. In Frank Rijkaard we had a coach who we liked a lot but we could see that his time was coming to an end. Frank took a team that was nothing and won the Champions League. He inherited a side with Saviola, Kluivert and Riquelme that had finished sixth, and then he won the league and the Champions League.
‘The following year the team’s level dropped a little. A 5 per cent drop in commitment at the highest level creates difficulties and Frank didn’t know how to re-energise the group. In December we decided to make a change. Mourinho had left Chelsea and there were possibilities to bring him in in January but we thought that it made no sense. We had to finish the season with Frank and give the new coach the opportunity to begin from scratch. Txiki was charged with the task of exploring alternatives and he went to various people: to Valverde, to Blanc, to Mourinho …’
Joan Laporta was the Barça president who conducted the operation and Txiki Begiristain, ex-Barcelona player and the then technical director, organised the interviews. Txiki met Mourinho in Lisbon and, after hearing his presentation, told him that Johan Cruyff would have the last word. The legendary Dutch player was at the time the club’s oracle. In the political climate that had always enveloped Barcelona, the presence of a figure whose legitimacy transcended the periodic presidential elections served to prop up risky decisions. The only person who enjoyed the necessary prestige to play that role was Cruyff.
Impatient ahead of the possibility of a return to the club in which he had worked between 1996 and 2000, Mourinho called Laporta: ‘President, allow me to speak with Johan. I’m going to convince him …’ Laporta got straight to the point and confessed that the decision had already been taken. The new coach would be Pep Guardiola. The news completely threw Mourinho, who told him that he had made a serious mistake. Guardiola, in his opinion, was not ready for the job.
Soriano describes the decisive moment: ‘After going through all the coaches that Txiki had examined, the conclusion was that it came down to two. In the end there was a meeting in which it was decided that it would be Guardiola, based on certain criteria.
‘We had put together a presentation and produced a document: what are the criteria for choosing the coach? It was clear that Mourinho was a great coach but we thought Guardiola would be even better. There was the important issue of knowledge of the club. Mourinho had it, but Guardiola had more of it, and