The Big Match result: Special One Chelsea Nil

Stan Hey celebrates a football coach whose appeal spread far beyond
the fans at Stamford Bridge

His entrance on to the English stage was almost as dramatic as his
exit from it was bathetic. On a gloomy spring night at Old Trafford in
2004, his Porto team had just scored the late goal that would knock
Manchester United out of the Champions League, and suddenly there he
was – running maniacally out on to the touchline, his long overcoat
flapping, like a character from a Gothic novel. In that instant
football, and the wider world, got to know the name Jose Mourinho.

Last Tuesday night, the same man sat alone, hunched over a small
notebook as his richly endowed Chelsea team struggled to achieve a 1-1
draw with the lowly Norwegian side Rosenborg in front of a meagre
crowd. Meanwhile, in the directors' box above, his masters finalised
plans for his departure, ultimately dissatisfied with what the
Portuguese impresario was putting on. The club's Russian-oligarch
owner Roman Abramovich wielded the axe during the screening of a new
celebratory film about Chelsea, as cover for the moment when Mourinho
was "disappeared".

For three-and-a-half years Mourinho had bewitched and antagonised
English and European football in equal measure, delivering a first
championship to Chelsea in 50 years, and winning it a second time for
good measure. He added League Cups and an FA Cup but not, fatefully,
the Champions League trophy that his Porto team went on to win in
2004, a victory that exalted him to the highest ranks of football and,
within a month, the manager's job at Chelsea.

At the press conference that anointed him, he displayed qualities that
would endear him to the public and inflame some of them at the same
time. "I'm a European champion... I'm not one of the bottle... I'm a
special one." The press pounced; "the Special One" was born. What
Mourinho had intended was a mixture of modesty and self-confidence
befitting his slow rise from PE graduate to full-time manager. In the
"Portu-glish" which would charm the pants off hardened hacks at his
Chelsea press conferences, Mourinho mangled his wine analogy, and the
intended notion that he was now a vintage product was lost in
translation. But the label had been attached.

"The Special One" was a gift to back-page headline writers, and an
instant shorthand to his detractors. The phrase even turned up, rather
poignantly, on banners held by admiring fans last Thursday as he
returned to Stamford Bridge to complete the last contractual rites of
his departure. With a glowing endorsement from the Prime Minister, and
tearful crowds mourning Mourinho's passing, we almost had a mini-Diana
moment.

So how did this 44-year-old Portuguese manager come to dominate the
news channels, the phone-ins and the internet chatlines after the
all-too-routine football occurrence of losing his job?

Part of the explanation is probably the romance of his rise from
sporting no-hoper to £6.5m-a-year success. It may also be to do with a
newer cultural strand, English acceptance of the migrant worker who
turns out to be better at his job than his indigenous counterparts.

As a nation we've come to admire foreigners who do well in our
country; from Polish craftsmen and Asian curry millionaires to the
thousands of Portuguese workers who keep Norfolk's fish and food
processing industries going and to whom, I am informed, "Mourinho has
been an inspiration". These people have re-sold to us the lost values
of the Victorian work ethic and in some aspects, the value of
community. It also helped that Mourinho was funny, good-looking and a
family man, qualities that gave him a cross-over appeal to football
fans of both sexes and beyond.

What was most remarkable about the past few days was the regret
expressed by football managers and rival fans. Hard nuts such as Steve
Bruce and Dennis Wise said he was a "breath of fresh air" and "not
just a good manager but a good man". Rafael Benitez, Liverpool's
Spanish coach, who twice thwarted Mourinho's European dream, and
suffered abuse for it, has yet to be canvassed.

Ironically, Mourinho, like Benitez and Arsθne Wenger at Arsenal –
another manager with whom the Portuguese was less than cordial (he
once called the Frenchman a "voyeur"' for his perceived obsession with
Chelsea's methods) – represent the peaks of the involvement of foreign
coaches in the English game. What they share is the syndrome whereby
modest playing careers became the spur for management triumphs.

Equally, the most successful of the British managers in the past 30
years – Bob Paisley of Liverpool, Brian Clough of Derby County and
Nottingham Forest and Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United – did not
enjoy wild heights as players. And there was pain in their hearts that
could have destroyed them had they not used it as fuel for another
life within football. Paisley was dropped by Liverpool before the 1950
FA Cup Final; Clough played for England but his career was prematurely
ended by a broken leg; Ferguson was moved on from his beloved Glasgow
Rangers.

Mourinho's trauma was less severe but equally provocative. His father,
Felix, was the goalkeeper for the local team, Vitoria Setubal – they
knocked Liverpool out of the European Fairs (Uefa) Cup in 1969 – but
the young Jose couldn't even make it with Setubal's second club, as a
would-be midfield general.

Here, the Hollywood factor kicks in, with a script not unlike Budd
Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run?' in which the office boy ruthlessly
observes his superiors, works hard and rises above them all.
Mourinho's path was a five-year physical education/sports science
degree at Lisbon University, where he showed a ferocious desire to
learn.

Among his first football roles was as translator to Sir Bobby Robson,
when the former England manager cashed in on the kudos of his 1990
World Cup semi-final to coach at Sporting Lisbon, Porto and Barcelona.
Robson kept Jose by his side for six years. "He was alert, intelligent
and trustworthy."

Mourinho was allowed to coach teams for friendly games and moved on to
take his Uefa qualifying course in Scotland – one of the reasons he
enjoys the British game. He became a club coach at Benfica just seven
years ago, though he walked out after nine games, sensing boardroom
treachery. He moved to a lesser club, Uniao de Lleiria, improved them,
then took over at Porto – within three seasons he'd won domestic
league and cup, Uefa Cup (against Martin O'Neill's Celtic) and the
2004 Champions League. "The student had become the professor!" said
Sir Bobby, with affection.

So, like Benitez and Wenger, Mourinho became one of football's new
technocrats, coaches who use diet, physiological preparation, intense
tactical research, psychology and even philosophy. Chelsea became
Mourinho's experimental group, bonding the players to him by force of
will. He solved the business management conundrum that puzzles the
heads of the world's biggest corporations with regard to their top
employees – "how do you motivate millionaires?"

Mourinho clearly achieved this and more, if the accounts of tearful
players and manly hugs at his training ground farewell last Thursday
are true. It helped that he is closer in age to his players than many
managers are, more an elder brother than a father figure, and that he
dresses like them and shares their tastes in expensive "Chelsea
tractors". But he never embraced the China White/£5,000 bet/Hollyoaks
bimbo world that is often the beat of the £100,000-a-week footballer.

So, as he "waits for the phone to ring", the football and media worlds
will have to get used to being without him, firstly at Old Trafford
this afternoon.

Sir Alex will miss Mourinho's flattery and the expensive Portuguese
wine that he brought for after-match drinking. The press will miss his
eccentric quips – "pressure is not football, it is bird flu, I am
worried about this dead swan in Scotland" – and post-game rants about
cheating referees and optically challenged linesmen. The TV cameras
will miss his operatic gestures on the touchline and the fans will
miss chanting insults, using his name to scan perfectly with a chorus
from Verdi's Rigoletto.

But the Norfolk workers who gut our supermarket fish and trim our
Christmas turkeys will probably miss him most of all. The Portuguese
even have a single word for it, saudade – the sense of loss when
somebody big in your life is not there any more.
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The Sunday Times
September 23, 2007

Fatal flaws in Roman Empire
There would be only one winner in this clash of giant egos, but Jose
may have the last laugh


Joe Lovejoy

"He's the son I never had, and the best manager in the game" – Sam
Longson, Derby County chairman, on Brian Clough, May 1969 "He's become
too big for his boots. I got him to resign and proposed we accepted
it" – Longson after manoeuvring Clough out, October 1973

History has a habit of repeating itself, and Jose Mourinho, like
Clough, will return to haunt his old club one day. For those of us who
were around at the time, when "Old Big 'Ead", as he came to style
himself, was still "Young Big 'Ead", Clough's demise at Derby has
obvious parallels with Mourinho's departure from Chelsea in midweek.

After winning the league title and reaching the semi-finals of the
European Cup, the most charismatic manager of his generation was
forced out by a board envious of his stratospheric profile and
popularity, and moved on to greater glory with Derby's arch-rivals,
Nottingham Forest, where he won not only the league but the European
Cup twice, in successive seasons.

As a young reporter on the Derby Evening Telegraph, I remember Longson
bragging that he had "called Clough's bluff" and the old boy's
subsequent chagrin when his nemesis embarrassed him just along the
A52. It is not difficult to envisage Mourinho doing the same to
another jealous autocrat, Roman Abramovich, at Chelsea. The
self-anointed "Special One" said he intended to return to Premier
League management one day, and although the terms of his severance
package, which includes a confidentiality clause, preclude him from
doing so this season, Tottenham are by no means alone in their
eagerness to oblige him in the future.

Mourinho's agent, Jorge Mendes, claimed there had already been nine
offers, from England and abroad, and the man himself said two of them
were "serious". Mourinho indicated that his intention was to resume
work on the Continent, citing Italy and Germany as possibilities.
Eventually, though, he will be back. Three months ago, during
Chelsea's preseason trip to the United States, he confided that it
would be "an interesting challenge" to "turn around" another English
club one day, and went as far as mentioning Manchester City, Newcastle
and Everton, mischievously adding Liverpool, where his rivalry with
Rafa Benitez turned to enmity after their contentious Champions League
semi-final in 2005.

Yesterday Mourinho said: "I hope to come back and work here, for sure.
I love English football and I will definitely come back, but it will
have to be the step after my next one." Chelsea are certain to miss
him, having hastily appointed a successor, Avram Grant, who, at his
inaugural press conference on Friday, had unfortunate echoes of
Tottenham's unlamented Christian Gross. Like Gross, who came to London
from Switzer-land, Grant has enjoyed success in a minor footballing
country, Israel, but has done nothing to suggest that he is up to the
task of managing a top English club.

His modest CV, awkward grasp of the English language and lugubrious
manner are in stark contrast to his predecessor. The new set-up hardly
squares with the declared aim to become "internationally recognised as
the world's No 1 club by 2014". It was Chelsea's chief executive,
Peter Kenyon, who set that target at the beginning of August. Mind
you, he also said: "It's critically important Jose is still here after
a season when we got to a stage where nobody thought he would be,
apart from the people inside the club."

In truth, Mourinho was always on borrowed time. It ran out at 5.35pm
on Sunday, September 2, when, in a gladiatorial gesture seen by
millions on Sky TV, Abramovich turned his thumb down, and his back, on
a floundering Chelsea team and walked out 10 minutes before the end of
their 2-0 defeat at Villa Park. Incensed by the ineptitude, real or
perceived, that he had just witnessed, his inclination was to
terminate the manager's three-year tenure there and then, and he had
to be dissuaded from doing so by Kenyon and the club chairman, Bruce
Buck.

Their advice, influenced by Mourinho's messianic standing with the
fans, was to wait for a more propitious moment to act. That quickly
arrived after consecutive disappointing draws at Stamford Bridge,
against Black-burn last Saturday (0-0) and Rosenborg in the Champions
League in midweek (1-1), when the stadium was barely half-full.

Mourinho must have guessed his number was up when Abramovich was
caught on camera laughing as the Norwegian also-rans' goal went in.
Afterwards he had a 20-minute conversation with his favourite player
and confidant, Andriy Shevchenko, then he decided enough was enough.
There were no dissenting voices this time, and, for all the talk of
"mutual agreement", Mourinho was in effect sacked on Wednesday night.

If the timing was a surprise, confirmation that the estrangement of
owner and manager had become terminal was anything but. They were at
odds for the whole of last season, when they were not on speaking
terms for months on end. Abramovich ceased even to attend matches for
a time. It was common knowledge that his agents were sounding out
potential successors to Mourinho, who, for his employer, had become
too big for his Gucci size nines.

There was an element of envy here. As a businessman, Abramovich does
not subscribe to the cult of the manager and always resented the fact
that having paid the thick end of £200m for the players the fans
adore, it was Mourinho who received all the credit. "Why do they never
sing my name?" Abramovich has asked Kenyon. It was bad enough that
Mourinho's attritional tactics were not to the liking of Abramovich,
who hankered after "The Beautiful Game", as played by Arsenal at a
fraction of the price. Much worse for the man who had poured £500m
into the club was the manager's assertion, more than once in the past
year, that he had been denied the resources needed for sustained
success.

In two transfer windows, last January and again during the summer,
Mourinho claimed that he had been refused funds for the reinforcements
he wanted. Abramovich was infuriated by the implied criticism and said
that if Mourinho needed more centre-halves, he shouldn't have sold
William Gallas and Robert Huth. The ultimate affront was Mourinho's
florid analogy on the eve of the Rosenborg match, when he likened his
situation to that of a chef trying to make an omelette without the
best eggs. "The style of how we play is very important, but it is
omelette and eggs," he said. " In the super-market you have class one,
two and three eggs, and some are more expensive than others and give
you better omelettes. When class one eggs are in Waitrose and you
cannot go there, you have a problem." Abramovich exploded over that
one. After paying Harrods prices, the yolk was not going to be on him.

From the aesthetic viewpoint, Mourinho's pragmatic,
winning-is-everything football was a major bone of contention, and few
will dispute that Abramovich was entitled to a tad more entertainment
for his investment. It was his hands-on approach to getting it that
led to the great clash of egos. Mourinho, whose custom and preference
was to pick and choose his own staff, always objected strongly when
Abramovich took a hand in such things, and their first seismic
disagreement came in June 2005.

Having won the Premiership for the first time, Mourinho opposed the
recruitment, in an unspecified capacity, of Frank Arnesen (his job
description became chief scout), who had been Tottenham's director of
football until he was suspended for negotiating a move to Stamford
Bridge. Arnesen was photographed on Abramovich's yacht (or rather one
of his three), an illegal approach for which Chelsea were fined £5m.
Mourinho made it plain that he neither wanted nor needed the Dane. The
two men never got on and Mourinho recently blamed Arnesen for the
dearth of good young players coming through Chelsea's youth system.

The manager saw it as more unwelcome interference when Abramovich, in
search of a sprinkling of stardust, courted Ukraine's Shevchenko, a
friend, and Germany's captain, Michael Ballack, at the end of the
2005-6 season, when Chelsea had again been champions. Nearly £55m was
spent on acquiring the two players, neither of whom Mourinho wanted.
They were accommodated only on sufferance. Unsurprisingly in the
circumstances, neither has been a success, which Mourinho greeted with
an "I told you so" attitude that only antagonised his boss further.

It was against this background that Mourinho threatened to resign in
January, when Abramovich first made a move for Grant, saying he could
"get more" out of the team, particularly Shevchenko. Any manager would
bridle at such a slight, and Kenyon had to work overtime as peacemaker
to prevent a mid-season divorce.

Three months ago, when Grant left Portsmouth, where he was technical
director, to join Chelsea after all, it was clear that Mourinho's
power base had been seriously eroded and his nose put out of joint. As
sporting director, the man who was close to taking Israel to the 2006
World Cup was given wide-ranging powers involving coaching and player
recruitment. More significantly, Grant had the ear of Abramovich. The
two men had forged a friendship since their introduction in 2004 by
the so-called super-agent, Pini Zahavi.

Mourinho didn't like it, regarding Grant as Abramovich's dressing room
"nark", but was told to lump it. He was left in no doubt that if he
refused to work with Grant and could not establish a better working
relationship with Arnesen, he would be sacked. He soldiered on until
last Tuesday night, when the Rosenborg result rendered his position
untenable.

Whither now Chelsea? Nowhere fast, unless it is backwards. It is
interesting that Grant has been denied the title of manager – his job
designation is head coach – and that no contract has been agreed. His
credentials would not merit a second glance at any other top club, and
the next few games, including Manchester United this afternoon, Hull
City away in the Carling Cup and Valencia in the Champions League,
have an ominous look about them.

The smart roubles are on another change next summer, by which time
Guus Hiddink will have had his fill of Moscow. And Mourinho? Like
Terry Venables with Alan Sugar, he has learnt the hard way that the
money men always win in the end. That said, the "Special One" can cry
all the way to the bank with his £17m payoff. English football will be
the poorer without him.

Where to next? Top clubs in contention for Mourinho

Atletico Madrid
Their big-spending summer, more than £50m shelled out, has not
produced top-four form for Mexican coach Javier Aguirre. A strong
Portuguese connection at the club could make Atletico an appealing
challenge

Internazionale
Roberto Mancini guided Inter to their ? rst scudetto in 18 seasons
last May, but the pressure is never entirely off and Inter are
long-time admirers

Juventus
Claudio Ranieri had started well at Juve until a defeat last Sunday,
but if his pursuit of a top-four place, and a spot in next season's
Champions League, begins to falter, Juve may look elsewhere

Barcelona
Coach Frank Rijkaard has been heavily criticised, but only a deep
crisis would lead Barηa to look up Mourinho after so much bad feeling
developed during Champions League jousts with Chelsea

Milan Carlo Ancelotti has won the Champions League twice in four
seasons, but with an ageing squad he may be ready for new challenges

Tottenham
Martin Jol will be dismayed by reports that Spurs are furiously
hitting 'redial' as they try to contact Mourinho's agent. Mourinho
says he would love to work in England again, but not this season

Real Madrid
Madrid approached Mourinho early this year, but Bernd Schuster's 100%
league record offers him some security. For now

Portugal
Mourinho says he'd like it one day, but has ruled out replacing Luiz
Felipe Scolari in time for Euro 2008, should his country qualify

Chelsea under Mourinho

2004-05 Premier League champions, Carling Cup winners, Champions
League semi?nals

2005-06 Premier League champions

2006-07 FA Cup, left, Carling Cup, Premier League runners-up,
Champions League semi?nals

- Mourinho was in charge for 185 matches, winning 124, drawing 40 and
losing 21. That impressive record includes a 60-match unbeaten run in
Premier League matches at Stamford Bridge

The Rich One: Mourinho tops cash league

Jose Mourinho, 44, football coach
- The Special One really did have a special contract at Chelsea. His
original £5m-a-year deal, signed when he moved from Porto to Stamford
Bridge back in 2004, was raised to £5.2m in the summer of 2005. This
made him easily the highest-paid manager in the Premier League

-Mourinho's personality, wit, good looks and charisma not only brought
him a large female following, but also made him a hugely attractive
marketing tool and he quickly registered his name as a brand

- His appeal to blue chip companies was evident when American Express
paid him £750,000 for two hours' work. Other deals with Armani, adidas
and Samsung, right, easily added another £1m annually on top of his
salary from Chelsea n In his Chelsea reign of just over three years,
Mourinho should have earned in excess of £18m. His contract had three
years to run – and would no doubt have included further pay rises had
he stayed. By paying an estimated £17m, Roman Abramovich has actually
got rid of him cheaply. That £17m package, agreed in just 15 minutes
and comprising his contract in full and compensation for image rights,
should take the Portuguese's fortune to more than £34m for what is in
effect three years' work

- With Internazionale rumoured to be ready to offer him an £8m-a-year
contract to coach in Milan, there is some mileage to go in the rise of
'the Rich One'

- Even now, his £34m fortune makes him easily the richest manager in
world football . . . provided he had his tax affairs organised
appropriately

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Chelsea lose at Russian roulette

By Patrick Barclay, Sunday Telegraph

Too many cooks (to mix the valedictory metaphor of Jose Mourinho's
Chelsea) spoiled the omelette. Roman Abramovich sapped the powers of,
and eventually lost, one of the world's leading coaches because, being
both preposterously rich and ignorant of how a football club should be
run, he accumulated a bewildering array of advisers. It was tolerable
until Abramovich began to recruit football men of his own: a Dutch
scout and then, crucially, the Israeli coach Avram Grant, who, in
Mourinho's sudden absence, will emerge from his strict observance of
Yom Kippur in time to send the team out to play Manchester United at
Old Trafford this afternoon.

It will, I suspect, take Abramovich more than a day to atone for the
errors made in pursuit of the increasingly vain notion that an
equivalent of Manchester United or Barcelona could be built in west
London in a few years. While the football part of the job was all but
completed by Mourinho when Chelsea not only became England's champions
for the first time in half a century but retained the title, we can
now see the full fatuity of a statement by Peter Kenyon – the chief
executive plucked from United to oversee the confidently expected
eclipse – only a few months ago. Chelsea, he said, had become a "more
dynamic, more relevant" brand than United.

Last Tuesday a mere 25,000 saw them draw at home to Rosenborg
Trondheim in the Champions League. United would have attracted three
times as many. Heavens, even Tottenham got 36,000 last week for a UEFA
Cup tie against Anorthisis Famagusta.

If the low attendance at Stamford Bridge had reflected popular
disaffection with Mourinho, his supplanting by Grant would have made
sense. But there is scant evidence of this. And, although there is
some weight in the theory that Mourinho had found it more and more
difficult to inspire the players, who was to blame for that? Money
apart, there is nothing a footballer likes better than an excuse – and
Abramovich created one every time it was reported that relations with
the management had become perilously strained. For month after month
these distractions went on, to the extent that just about every close
observer of the Premier League scene forecast Chelsea would begin this
season without Mourinho. They were not far wrong.

Mourinho, let it swiftly be added, is no angel. He can be a prickly
perfectionist, a little dictator. But the trick in English football is
to put up with that – as Kenyon will be aware from his experience of
Sir Alex Ferguson – because it works like no other form of government.
Almost invariably since the top tier of our game was rebranded in
1992, the championship has gone to a football-led autocracy:
Ferguson's United, Arsene Wenger's Arsenal or Mourinho's Chelsea.

Only when the effects of the gradual undermining of Mourinho's
position began to be felt did Chelsea relinquish the title in his
third, injury-hampered season (though they did reach the semi-finals
of the Champions League, losing to Liverpool only on penalties, and
won both domestic cups). What has taken place under Abramovich's
bovine gaze is a long and laborious fixing of something that wasn't
broken. No wonder the supporters of Chelsea's rivals are laughing
their heads off. And ponder the mood of Ken Bates, who sold the club
to Abramovich only to be declared unwelcome at it – just imagine that
cackling up in Leeds.

Kenyon, asked by my colleague Andrew Warshaw if Mourinho had been too
"high-maintenance", smiled in recognition and replied: "If this thing
is going to work in the long term, the relationships between the key
people in the organisation have to be right. It hasn't been right for
a long time and it got to the point where it wasn't going to be right
in the future. Now, for all those reasons you've written about [the
lack of style on the pitch, Mourinho's disdain for the contributions
of Andrei Shevchenko, widely portrayed as the owner's pet player, and
Michael Ballack], we have to regroup." His further assertion that it
had become a mutual view was confirmed yesterday by Mourinho in an
interview with The Sun. But the facts are that Mourinho, in his first
season, turned Chelsea into exceptional champions – the ratio of goals
scored to goals conceded was among the highest ever recorded – and
that he left without supervising a single home defeat in the Premier
League. To ask us to believe that he simply got restless and irritable
with the club, like a spoiled child with a parent, would be to ask
rather a lot.

What is it they say about legal disputes? Only the lawyers win. Amid
football's personality clashes, it is the agents who flourish, and
Chelsea have been especially beneficent to Pini Zahavi; instrumental
in the arrival of Abramovich, he also helped to arrange for Mourinho
to come. And some of the subsequent signings. And, at the beginning of
the season his friend and compatriot Grant, who had spent the previous
campaign in Harry Redknapp's shadow at Portsmouth, replenishing a
stock of knowledge about contemporary English football of which no
less an authority than Sven-Goran Eriksson has spoken respectfully.
Zahavi has perfected the role of eminence grise.

A former sports journalist, he came to my notice when introducing the
Israeli defender Avi Cohen to Liverpool in 1979 and now his ever-ready
smile requires no explanation. While I still scribble in the hope of
one day paying off Northern Rock (or whatever is to become of them),
dear Pini lights his cigars with million-pound cheques. But he earns
them and you can be assured his recruitment services will be at
Grant's disposal should the coach still be in place when the transfer
window reopens in midwinter.

The question of where Mourinho goes next is fascinating. Wisely, and
out of respect for the Brazilian manager of Portugal, Luiz Felipe
Scolari, he has ruled himself out of immediate contention for that
job. Even if he wanted to take over from Martin Jol at Tottenham, he
could not do so because the terms of his severance from Chelsea
prevent him from joining another Premier League club until next
season. Manchester United, though, would attract him when Ferguson
retires; even if the Scot stays in charge at Old Trafford until his
70th birthday, Mourinho would still be only 48. You can put his name
alongside those of Martin O'Neill, Mark Hughes, Roy Keane and (if the
Glazers' advisers know their stuff) David Moyes on the list of
candidates.

But that would give Mourinho at least four years to restore any damage
the relationship with Abramovich may have done to his reputation, or
enhance it, in Italy, where he has always said he would like to work
one day, or Spain, where he has unfinished business with Barcelona.
Whether he would prefer to go back to the Camp Nou, where he felt he
was accorded little credit for his assistance to Sir Bobby Robson and
then Louis van Gaal, or take on their arch-rivals Real Madrid is an
interesting point. For the time being both have managers. But Mourinho
now has time on his side. How Avram Grant, who is somehow supposed to
emulate him by starting his Chelsea tenure with a win over United,
must envy him that.

What Mourinho had brought, Kenyon acknowledged, was "a winning culture
that did not exist within the football club before". Now that platform
had to be built upon. "There was no plan to get rid of Jose," he
stressed. "It evolved. Relationships are complex things and I think
there had been a great effort on everybody's part. Look, he's done an
unbelievable job for Chelsea Football Club. And he's a friend. But
with someone who's that successful come other issues.

"It's what he is. You're not going to change him. I think I've done
everything I could over the past 12 months to try to keep the thing
together. Not because I'm a friend of Jose Mourinho. But because I
thought – at that time – it was the right thing to do. But it can get
to the point where you are spending more time and effort on the
problem that on the job itself, and that's where we got."

I suppose part of Kenyon's role is to act as a sort of semantic
bodyguard for Abramovich – and so staunchly has he performed it that
the owner has seldom been held responsible for Mourinho's
difficulties. Until now, perhaps.

Upon Grant falls a heavy burden, increased by queries over his
qualifications. Asked if his post as director of football would be
filled, Kenyon hesitated before replying that he expected so: "It was
an important role three months ago and is still important." We shall
keep an eye on that.

Meanwhile Grant will be looking to replace Mourinho's
Portuguese-speaking assistants, including experts in fitness and
goalkeeping. One of those became briefly famous for wearing a woolly
hat under which an earpiece was allegedly concealed when Mourinho was
banished from the dugout for a Champions League tie against Bayern
Munich. Others would stand by his side offering silent support while
he complained to the press about referees or came up with explanations
for the occasional defeat. Somehow their Pavlovian presence diminished
Mourinho like nothing else and they, at least, will not be greatly
missed.

The interpretation a cynic might put on Chelsea's defence of the
appointment of Avram Grant goes something like this: Jose Mourinho has
built such a strong squad of players, and ingrained such a winning
mentality into them, that pretty well any half-decent coach could
handle them, so we may as well have one with whom Roman Abramovich
gets on and can easily manipulate; if nothing else, it'll be a change.

Grant cannot have greatly enjoyed hearing the scorn, inadvertent and
otherwise, that was directed at him during his inaugural appearance
before the media at Stamford Bridge on Friday. He absorbed it well
enough but had no counter-argument save the notion that other managers
had come to England as relative unknowns and prospered: after Arsene
Wenger was mentioned, Grant threw in the names of Mourinho himself
and, from farther afield, Fabio Capello, who had "started as a youth
coach at Milan".

But "Arsene Who?", for all the infamous ignorance proclaimed by a
London newspaper, had steered Monaco to the French championship and
the brink of a Champions League final, while Mourinho arrived a
European champion, having also guided Porto to the UEFA Cup and
national titles. Capello was a distinguished international player who
went on to learn as a coach under Arrigo Sacchi. So, although Grant
has not been hired for his debating skills, let's just hope he is
better at choosing teams than analogies.

The prospects are dim because he has so little experience of the level
of competition to which he now aspires. He has watched lots of
Champions League matches and no doubt understood them better than
most; to be held in high esteem in Israel is not negligible. But
proving himself to players accustomed to the Special One will be
difficult and I fear Grant's regime may ultimately prove to have more
in common with that of Christian Gross, the Swiss who came to
Tottenham on a one-way tube ticket only to be flown home after nine
months of derision – Alan Sugar blamed the media for his failure –
than those of either Wenger or Mourinho, let alone Capello.

Grant does have one advantage in that, like Wenger, who was brought to
Arsenal after a sustained campaign by the vice-chairman David Dein, he
is known to and clearly trusted by the key figure at Chelsea. He has
also bedded himself into the club since leaving Portsmouth three
months ago and can avail himself of the advice of the long-serving
Steve Clarke, his assistant. But still, as Sir Alex Ferguson would
say: "Dearie me!" Grant does have a job on his hands if it is to make
the team serial winners again while restoring sexy football to the
Bridge and – to paraphrase the ambition set out by the chief
executive, Peter Kenyon, the other day – collecting two European
titles in the next six years.


PS…We'll meet again

On the day Jose Mourinho's fate was settled, and while those outside
Chelsea's inner circles remained oblivious, I happened to be at an
early-evening party in the company of women. When the subject of
Mourinho came up, a degree of drooling ensued, although an especially
elegant willowy blonde begged to differ slightly from the prevailing
view that he was a world-class looker. "He's too much like a
Portuguese waiter," she explained. At which point a Portuguese waiter
passed with a tray of canapιs. A handsome fellow in his own right, he
stopped, smiled sweetly and offered her a choice of identically
arranged prawns. He turned out to be from Setubal, Mourinho's home
town, and football-mad. The elegant lady had no interest in the game.
And that is why England will miss the man: he engages us. But I am
sure we have not seen the last of him and — who knows? — if the money
initially thrown at the bookies turns out to be smart and Mourinho
ends up in charge of the Portuguese national team, the English may
find themselves face to face with him at next summer's European
Championship. What a prospect.

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