(A cheerful looking Mourinho reacts positively to the news that Real Madrid would quite like him back)
Someone, somewhere, started a rumour. The rumour spread and began to take some shape. The rumour was now being believed and seen as possibly true. The rumour then becomes a story in the national press, who don’t really care whether or not there is any truth in it, as long as somebody buys the paper.
Here is the national press not really caring.
When I read the story originally my first reaction was to check the date. Satisfied that I hadn’t been asleep for five months and it wasn’t April 1st, I looked for proof that I wasn’t hallucinating. No, no sign of any strange coloured mushrooms or green tobacco anywhere. There were the usual empty bottles, but not enough to send me this far over the edge. Therefore, I must be sober, (or as sober as anyone can be nowadays), and what I am reading must have some substance, however tenuous, or it couldn’t be printed.
So Jose Mourinho has an agreement to take over at Manchester United when Louis van Gaal rides off with his damsel into the sunset of the Algarve in 2017.
But Jose had said he didn’t want the United gig. He even denied bursting into tears on discovering that David Moyes was being appointed before him. Chelsea was his choice. His one and only, his forever. Why would we suddenly be reading that a deal has been reached with United?
One of the problems with Jose’s “it’s Chelsea forever for me” theory is that he didn’t run it by Roman Abramovich and get the approval which would have made his theory more likely to become fact. He just assumed, a little bit like when a Premier league side plays a second division team in the Capital One Cup, that he would always win and therefore, blessings from above weren’t required.
At the moment he isn’t winning. He isn’t winning any games, he isn’t winning any friends, he is unlikely to be winning any legal battles in the near future, so he also isn’t winning any arguments. For a serial winner, poor old Jose is doing a lot of losing right now.
So, did he want the United job or not? Alex Ferguson says he wasn’t offered it because he had already said he wanted to go back to Chelsea. Jose concurs, surprise, surprise! It was, however, a convenient excuse AFTER Moyes was given the job. Many people at United probably wouldn’t have wanted Mourinho and the baggage that travels with him. I get the impression that Lord Ferg probably did want Mourinho but that there were others who didn’t, so he had to move on to his eighth choice, luckily or unluckily for David Moyes, who was just wondering how to kill some time before the Real Sociedad job became available
United are still relatively old fashioned in their outlook on life. They want their players to behave impeccably and to always show the club in a good light. The manager, within reason, has to behave. He can’t be seen to be flicking the ear of the opposition coach, or running into the other manager’s technical area to have a shoving match. These types of thing are frowned upon in the great hallways of the Theatre of Dreams.
We can now add to the non-requisites at Old Trafford some more Mourinho party pieces. They probably wouldn’t want one of their medical team suing their manager. They probably wouldn’t want their manager fined on an almost weekly basis because he can’t keep quiet, (admittedly, this must be remarkably difficult given some of the ridiculous refereeing decisions), they probably wouldn’t want their expensively assembled team languishing in 16th place in the Premier league table, even Moyes couldn’t manage that.
When all said and done, I am prepared to believe that some well meaning soul genuinely thought he had a story and went to press without validating it. It happens to us all. When was the last time you had your story validated? There, you see what I mean. It can happen to anyone.
The fact of the matter is, that unless there has been a mood swing of gargantuan proportions at Manchester United, Jose Mourinho is probably further away from the manager’s seat there now than he has ever been.
Update on November 13th: Here’s the same national press, still not caring, but they now say that he is going to Real Madrid.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 