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Jose Mourinho

How do you feel about Mourinho appointment

  • Excited - silverware here we come baby

    Votes: 666 46.7%
  • Meh - will give him a chance and hope he is successful

    Votes: 468 32.8%
  • Horrified - praying for the day he'll fuck off

    Votes: 292 20.5%

  • Total voters
    1,426

Mandy Dingle

Well-Known Member
Jan 31, 2013
295
1,803
Isn't it nice getting some actual answers in a press conference? Not gonna take a swipe at Poch cause the wounds are still fresh, but it really is a breath of fresh air after the last 12 months of... Well, I don't really know what they've been.

This obviously wont last. It's gonna come crashing down right on our houses, incinerating those we love, scorching the earth, and salting the soil.

But fuck me, we're gonna have a hell of a time until that day comes.
 

wrd

Well-Known Member
Aug 22, 2014
13,603
58,005

edgey

Well-Known Member
May 16, 2013
2,922
2,993
Really impressed with that presser! Was hyped anyway but now I'm very excited for the future, even if it is short term it's gonna be one hell of a ride!
 

TheAmerican

Well-Known Member
Aug 30, 2012
6,909
18,760
Love this:

"If we win titles it will not be the consequence of me but the consequence of the club’s work. This is a package and a vision. Everything starts with a vision. The stadium is part of the vision. The training ground is part of the vision. The academy is part of the vision. To try to keep all the best players and refuse to let the best players to go away is part of the vision too. Maybe to have a manager with my experience is also part of the vision. This is about the vision and if we win a title, it doesn’t matter when, my contract is three and a half years, but if we win a title during my period it will not be because of myself. It is just the natural consequence of a vision and a plan."

Seems plausible to me that the next part of Levy's plan was someone like Mourinho to manage.
 

Sp3akerboxxx

Adoption: Nabil Bentaleb
Apr 4, 2006
5,180
7,620
PSG and City do win things most years.

Money in football absolutely does buy success. It's crap but it's true.

And of course the real worry, taking the 'money doesn't buy success' mantra, that was very much true in Jose's last job.

But either way, he's going to need to do more coaching than buying and he hasn't done that since Porto.

He had a positive net spend at inter Milan, and they were the first Italian side to win the treble ever.
 

Grapo2001

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2011
3,700
5,957
Let's be honest, most of us hated Mourinho when he was a rival manager because of his arrogance and obnoxiousness, but when it becomes your arrogance and your obnoxiousness it galvanises you and gives you strength. I love Dele but rival fans hate him because of his antics. Same with players like Julian Dicks, Diego Costa, Roy Keane, Patrick Viers etc. We all hate them but if they were our dickhead we would love them.
 
May 17, 2018
11,872
47,993
Post the full article you hipster.

Get your own sub, you tramp
?

Here:
The first thing to acknowledge is that people can change. The Jose Mourinho settling in at Tottenham Hotspur is not the same man who swaggered into Chelsea back in 2004, or even the slightly greyer figure who returned nine years later with a second European Cup on his curriculum vitae but scarred by his time at Real Madrid. “I’m the same personality, the same nature, but seeing things from a different perspective,” he had offered on his second coming. His outlook had shifted, if perhaps only marginally. It will have done so again in the years since.

His experiences at Stamford Bridge, where it all unravelled so spectacularly, and, most recently, Old Trafford will surely now colour how he tackles his latest role back in English football. He has a new-look backroom staff, led by his trilingual assistant Joao Sacramento, who has been prised from Lille, at Spurs’ Enfield training base. They will bring new ideas.

There will be no Rui Faria, so often the private provocateur behind some of Mourinho’s more infamous public outbursts, but also someone upon whom the manager leaned as his right-hand man. At Tottenham, he will not seek to emulate every tactic or ploy instigated at Chelsea or Inter Milan, Real or Manchester United, in order to kick-start a recovery.

Then, there is the timing of his appointment. Mourinho has not taken over a team whose domestic campaign is already under way since swapping Uniao de Leiria for Porto as a 38-year-old in early 2002, back when his coaching career was in its infancy. There will be no meticulously planned, month-long pre-season in which to raise fitness levels through double, or even triple daily sessions. No opportunity to experiment in friendlies in an attempt to work out a favoured line-up or tactical game plan. No chance for players and staff to live in each others’ pockets on tour and learn how everyone ticks. Mourinho took the job on Wednesday morning and must send out a Spurs team at West Ham on Saturday lunchtime.

All of which will dictate how he sets about the task of replacing Mauricio Pochettino. And yet those traits that he claimed were constant back in 2013 — “the same personality, the same nature” — will still underpin how he deals with a squad who were good enough to reach the Champions League final in May only to find themselves treading water in mid-table in November. Some things will never change. To a certain extent, Tottenham’s players should know what to expect.

There will be the considerable positives that have tended to flare early in his tenure at clubs. Mourinho will pinpoint those in the ranks who are to be pivotal in what he hopes to achieve, and make them feel loved. Cherished, even. At Chelsea, he always revelled in a core of locals, English players for an English league just as he claimed to turn to Italians in Serie A and Spaniards in La Liga, “to keep the culture of the country and not lose some characteristics of the local football”.

Spurs have been regular contributors to Gareth Southgate’s England side in recent times, so that fit might work. And when Mourinho determines a player is key, he indulges him whether that be making a naked Frank Lampard feel “10ft tall” by insisting he was the best player in the world as he traipsed to the showers on pre-season in the United States back in 2004, to banishing the uncharacteristic self-doubt that had crept into John Terry’s game in 2013.

The centre-half, diminished by injury, had fallen out of favour over Rafael Benitez’s interim stint in charge at the end of the previous season. “Rafa had come out publicly and said my legs were gone, that I was finished,” Terry told the radio station Dubai Eye last week. “He’d pretty much told the club that as well. I was in Portugal having dinner with my wife and kids when I got a call from Mourinho telling me that he was back in charge.

“He told me: ‘You’re my captain, I love you, I need you to be on it.’ I was having a glass of wine, was about to have a dessert and I was instantly like: ‘No wine, no dessert.’ I was up the following morning, having two or three (individual) fitness sessions a day. He made me go from feeling lost under Rafa to knowing I had the trust of the manager.”

Plenty from that nucleus who excelled under Mourinho’s stewardship at Stamford Bridge share similarly glowing testimonies. Eidur Gudjohnsen, already a Chelsea player of four years when the Portuguese first arrived in England, had been braced for life to be “like the army” under the new regime. Those fears were shared by others, including Terry. “All the players had watched his first (“Special One”) press conference and were texting each other saying: ‘We could be in for it here’,” said the former Chelsea and England captain. “But when I met him for the first time, it was the complete opposite.

“He just wanted to get all the players onside. He called me and Frank Lampard in to talk individually, then got the whole group together. He then put on a full, detailed slideshow of how he wanted things, how he wanted us to be around the place, what he expected from us individually and collectively. He had the first month’s schedule already written up for everybody ‘so you can tell your wife, tell your kids and plan’. But if you broke it down, he knew what we were doing over the next three months from a footballing point of view.”

Mourinho addressed a similar meeting at Enfield on Wednesday in which the Tottenham players he had inherited that morning were urged to pull together to revive their season. Then there were one-to-ones with senior personnel to make clear his vision, with player-specific training plans outlined in the hope they can provoke an immediate, positive reaction. Both the level of preparation and the way it was all put into practice hark back, again, to those early exchanges at Chelsea’s former training ground, under the Heathrow flight path in Harlington, back in 2004.

A squad used to working under Claudio Ranieri had been presented from the off with clarity. A structure. Players were even given handbooks detailing all the team’s defensive plans. The sense prevailed that nothing was being done on the hoof. It was the right approach for the right group at the right time. The tempo and intensity of training were duly lifted from the outset, with the onus forever on players to impress. “That was Jose’s genius,” said Joe Cole. “We were always on our toes. He would give you a kick up the backside at times but it was fun playing for him too. He always seemed to know the right balance.”

“You’d be sitting there watching television and you’d get a text from him saying: ‘Are you watching this?’,” added Terry. “It’d be a comedy sketch show or something, and you’d end up having a two-way chat about it, and then it would just stop. And you’d be, like: ‘He’s not replied – what have I done?’ You’d go in the following morning and he wouldn’t speak to you and you’d be thinking: ‘Did I upset him?’ and check your messages again.

“Then, you come in the next day and he’s putting his arm around you, asking how you were the previous night, how the wife and kids are. He would come sit with you at breakfast. Then, a few days later, he wouldn’t even acknowledge you again. He knew how to press buttons. As an individual, it made you think you had to impress him every single day. He knew that if he did that with me, Lampard, Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole, Michael Ballack, Cech and Michael Essien — the big characters — and we were at it every single day, the other players who weren’t playing as much had just one way to go, and that was to match our standards on a daily basis.

“He created a culture. If Mourinho called a meeting at 10.30am, I’d be there at 10.15am because I never wanted to be late under Mourinho. Never. But all of a sudden, everyone was there at 10.15am. So, if you arrived at 10.20am, you felt like you were late even though you were actually 10 minutes early.” It was all about raising collective standards on the assumption that, if the senior players set the tone, others would follow. It worked with that group to spectacular effect.

His one-to-ones would inspire and pep conviction. In his second spell at the club, he would privately urge Diego Costa, such an asset when focused, to be at his most inflammatory out on the pitch, knowing the Brazil-born Spain striker added a thuggish dimension to the team’s play that knocked opponents back on their heels. At United, he would send the players text messages before games to rev them up. Those who excelled were treated to days off in blocks if he deemed that a means of reinvigorating them for the fixtures ahead.

“When he praises you, he makes you feel like the most special person in football,” a senior player coached under Mourinho at Old Trafford told The Athletic. “There was a time he spoke about me in a press conference and I felt on top of the world. In the good times, he knew what to say. He is a champion. He’s won everywhere he’s gone. You have to admire him for this, and it should motivate you to work even harder.

“When he arrived, I was expecting exactly what he is and what he became: a winner. We won two titles together (the League Cup and Europa League in 2017). He knows what he wants and I have to say, I liked our time together. As part of a leadership group, we had a good relationship: talking, asking me how I saw the group, how the players felt. He wanted that feedback.” Interaction has always been encouraged in his team meetings.

Ander Herrera, now of Paris Saint-Germain, had celebrated Mourinho’s “dynamic” training sessions, which would flit between tactical, technical and competitive drills to ensure there were few “long exercises where you might lose concentration”. “He is much more relaxed than he appears,” added Herrera’s former team-mate. “When we work, we work bloody hard. When we lost, he was bloody hard. And when we won, he wanted us to win the next game too. This mattered to him.

“He was good with days off but he wanted us to be sensible, to cleanse the mind on a day off and return completely fresh for the next training session. He sent me a text message when he left, and I replied thanking him for our time together. Despite how it ended, he remains an incredible manager.”

Those who worked under him at Chelsea will recognise those qualities. Cesc Fabregas suggested the kind of talks Mourinho staged with Harry Kane and Dele Alli on his first day at Spurs “brought back energy and fire in me”. The manager told Eden Hazard to be more ambitious in his play in their first tete-a-tete, with no mention of onerous tracking back or defensive responsibilities. Those demands would come later.

“Jose is the kind of manager who needs to get into players’ heads,” Branislav Ivanovic told The Athletic, recalling his time under a manager who would claim the Premier League for a third time in 2015. “When he does that, those players believe in themselves. He changed our mentality after only a couple of weeks of training at Chelsea (at the start of his second stint in charge). In that period we were so happy and impressed with his way of football, his way of talking to us every day. We knew definitely that we were going to win. There were no doubts because we were like one player. Everybody was focused and we dominated.”

Gary Cahill talks of “his aura, a presence and confidence that rubs off on his players”, while Thibaut Courtois initially spied a father figure in the Portuguese. “He knows when to be ‘one of us’, to be in with his players making jokes or relaxing us,” said the Belgium goalkeeper back in 2014 as he first made his mark at Stamford Bridge. “He might try and keep things upbeat and jokey ahead of a difficult away game, but other times he will be strong and distant. Above the team. Even severe sometimes. He mixes it up to keep everyone sharp.”

That mischievous sense of humour, more obvious in his dealings with the media through that first spell at Chelsea, has still resurfaced in more recent years. This is a manager who once cued his coach, Silvino Louro, to drench an unsuspecting audience of players and training ground staff, ostensibly there to listen to the manager’s rabble-rousing speech, with a bucket of cold water.

Water bombs are a recurring theme, with the manager’s entourage pelted by Mourinho and Faria from a balcony as they enjoyed a drink on the hotel terrace in Velden, Austria, back in the summer of 2014. They launched a similar aquatic attack later in that pre-season trip, and had bicycles stored close by so as to plead innocence as they subsequently rode past their soggy victims, pretending they were returning from a leisurely trip from the nearby village.

Then there were the acorns he would collect from the leafier side of the training pitches at Cobham and ping surreptitiously at his players in a bid to raise spirits while their title defence was collapsing in late 2015. He attempted everything in that trickiest of periods, whether carrot or stick, to summon a response. At United, when reports of his sour mood were dominating the back pages and the club started to feel on the slide, he made a point of strolling into the canteen whistling, singing, laughing and making jokes with the chef. His comedy bordered on defiance.

Maybe those perceived mood swings served to disconcert after a while. Particularly when results had taken a downturn, or if off-field political intrigue had started to infiltrate the dressing-room, and the customary calls for intensity started falling on weary minds and bodies. Then the unpredictability of Mourinho’s approach took on a rather wild air, at odds with the meticulous planner who had plotted teams’ routes to success. The confrontational side to his management style, which had once served to keep people eager to please, suddenly cut too close to the bone, too provocative. It merely served to rile.

Again, it boiled down to timing. This is a manager who, early in his second stint at Chelsea, once announced to his team at half-time that they had been “playing with 10 men” before turning to Hazard and pointing out he had been “rubbish”. The Belgian had been more used to being mollycoddled up to then. That was an early shot across the bows, designed to coax more from the playmaker. There were times in the weeks that followed when Mourinho would litter preparatory sessions on opponents’ star men with compliments to bolster his own playmaker’s confidence: “He is good, but he is no Hazard.” The Belgium international eventually came to terms with the tactic and the pair remain relatively close.

But, during that troubled autumn four years ago when Chelsea’s champions collapsed and were transformed overnight into relegation fodder, such an abrasive approach risked shattering brittle confidence. Back then, the manager picked fights with all and sundry, upsetting players and staff upon whom he might later need to rely. The core in whom he most trusted were overworked and overplayed, and wilted when they could offer no more. The rest had long since been alienated.

There has always been a volatility to his st,yle. At half-time he would lurch from the hairdryer one week, to placid calm the next, even if his team were losing at the break. Not that that necessarily represented a problem. Emmanuel Adebayor, who had grown used to Arsene Wenger’s more measured in-game dressing-room lectures, recalls retiring at the break 3-0 up at Real. “And yet Jose came into the dressing-room and went mental,” he said. “He kicked the fridge, threw water, killed everyone. He once killed Cristiano Ronaldo after he scored a hat-trick.”

Mourinho freely admits he expects more from his creative talents, which should serve as a warning of sorts to those free spirits in Spurs’ ranks. “I am not the kind of guy that makes life easy for the great players,” he said in pre-season back in 2013 when asked of his initial impressions of Hazard. “This kind of player is the last I praise. If you have more ability than the others, you have to do more than the others. You have to praise the guys who play at their limits, who give everything. They are not superstars. They are just good players trying to support their teams.

“I made life quite difficult for Joe Cole because I was going in another direction and he accepted that, so we transformed together. Someone people used to call a No 10 who would make one or two fantastic actions in a game, we turned into a kind of inside-winger, right and left, and strong defensively. He was fantastic. I’ve worked with Cole, Arjen Robben and Damien Duff; Cristiano, Angel di Maria and Mesut Ozil. If you are ‘different’, you are different, so go and show it.”

The criticism of Ronaldo post hat-trick probably spurred the Portuguese on, but others are not quite as thick-skinned. There are tales of Mourinho issuing a dressing down to one of the younger players in front of a crammed canteen on a pre-season tour, to ensure it was noted by all. Or of the manager deliberately telling a youngster the wrong time for a team meeting to ensure he could admonish him for being late in front of the rest of the squad. His intention, it seems, was to see if the player was angered and stood his ground. Instead, the youth-team graduate withdrew into himself and apologised, and Mourinho apparently considered that a strike against his character.

There is the tendency towards paranoia, whether that relates to strangers spying on training sessions or conspiracy theories over the commitment of his players. He has sought out scapegoats at times, rather than maybe scrutinising what he is doing wrong himself. There would be scepticism over injury niggles to key players — and not just Hazard’s hip complaint in 2015 — and wild accusations of dressing-room leaks which he deemed to undermine his authority.

The deterioration of his mood at United, amid frustrations in the club’s transfer dealings and the team’s stodgy form out on the pitch, served to suck all the happiness from Carrington. He cut a spiky, embittered figure over those final few months. He was uncommunicative, morose and, following Faria’s departure in search of a No 1 role, increasingly isolated. His assistant had often been the one to dissuade disgruntled players from seeking out the manager to voice their grievances. To Mourinho, he was a layer of protection. Stripped of that, he felt more exposed. It wore him down. He lost his edge.

There have been suggestions in the period of reflection since his sacking almost a year ago that he has reached out to former colleagues at the club and asked them to paint an honest picture of his behaviour, the kind of move made by someone who realises he might have gone too far, an acceptance of ill-judgement.

Spurs will certainly hope lessons have been learnt. Back on that first day at Chelsea 15 years ago, Mourinho had convinced a group of players that they could go on to secure a first league title since 1955. “The first slideshow in the team meeting, he put on had a picture of the trophy and he said: ‘That image stays with you for the whole season. That’s what we are going to do this year,” added Terry. “No manager had ever done that before. He then explained what we needed to do to achieve that.”

Tottenham’s immediate objectives are more mundane, beginning with a game of catch-up to the top four, but Mourinho retains the ability to inspire good players towards silverware. At a club that has claimed a solitary League Cup in the last 28 years, for all the eye-catching progress of the Pochettino era, any trophy would feel like mission accomplished.
 

djee

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2004
624
1,797
I appreciate that some of us are emotionally vulnerable right now, and, yes it was just an interview, but bloody heck - he doesn't half get you buzzing! He is a winner and if you were a player right now you'd be utterly buzzing. Yes the squad is not perfect, but my word, there would have been few managers who wouldn't have been desperate to take these players on; the potential is ridiculous.
 

Shadydan

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2012
38,247
104,143
Get your own sub, you tramp
?

Here:

Thanks man, let me treat you to a meal

veggies-and-dip-1d96c27db1244efeab577ead84f3698a.jpg
 

Phomesy

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
9,188
14,102
He had a positive net spend at inter Milan, and they were the first Italian side to win the treble ever.

Inter was the pinnacle of Mourinho's achievements in football imo. They had been nowhere for so long and he took them to the treble, beating Pep's Barca along the way.

It was defensive low block football but it had to be.

If he can do the same for us it would be amazing. Of course Spurs are in much better shape than Inter were thanks to Poch and Levy (infrastructure).
 

WiganSpur

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
15,974
32,682
It'll be interesting to see what decisions Mourinho makes regarding the keepers. Can't see him bringing one in January but I can see him looking to replace Lloris in the summer with a more modern keeper comfortable with their feet.
 

dansm31

New Member
Jun 22, 2012
1
0
Iam buzzing about mourinho being our manager.
I can see alot of similarities with the squad he had at chelsea first time round and the squad he has at tottenham now and look what he done with them.
robben>son drogba>kane lampard>alli etc etc
Gutted poch has gone but i do think we will go up a level with mourinho.
 

stov

Well-Known Member
Jul 20, 2005
3,353
6,112
The appointment just pisses over the philosophy we have been pursuing for years. Do we really think mourinho will play the attacking football and bring youth through.

This move stinks of panic.
 

WiganSpur

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
15,974
32,682
But what we should see immediately is more effort and intensity.

I think we'll win Saturday.
Still, don't think we should expect fireworks. JM said himself that it's only the second time he's come in to a club mid season. Like all coaches, you can only truly judge their work based off a full season with a couple of transfer windows to shape their squad.
 

Shadydan

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2012
38,247
104,143
The appointment just pisses over the philosophy we have been pursuing for years. Do we really think mourinho will play the attacking football and bring youth through.

This move stinks of panic.

He's not here to play pretty football, he's here to win.

Levy isn't gonna pay someone £15m a year because he was panicking, our current standing as a club now is to win some silverware and who better at doing that than Jose?
 

edgey

Well-Known Member
May 16, 2013
2,922
2,993
Let's be honest, most of us hated Mourinho when he was a rival manager because of his arrogance and obnoxiousness, but when it becomes your arrogance and your obnoxiousness it galvanises you and gives you strength. I love Dele but rival fans hate him because of his antics. Same with players like Julian Dicks, Diego Costa, Roy Keane, Patrick Viers etc. We all hate them but if they were our dickhead we would love them.

Absolutely agree! I want us to be shithouses, bastards, hated... All those things, because then you know you're doing well! Oliver Holt said something along the lines of "Spurs wont be a team that's admired anymore"... GOOD! I don't want us to be admired or nice or "doing it the right way", I want success, I want trophies, I want winners!!
 
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