In fact the self styled ‘Special One’ usually takes far more than that. But this summer he may be forced out of Madrid having failed to win the league in what would be his only season at the helm. Florentino Perez, according to Spanish paper Sport, has drawn up a shortlist of Rafa Benitez, Michel, Laurent Blanc and Carlo Ancelotti to be potential replacements for the controversial Portuguese tactician.
Has Mourinho simply bitten off more than even he, El Uno Especiale, can chew at Madrid with general director Jorge Valdano making his life increasingly difficult? Sure, he may have won everything there is to win repeatedly in the last six years with Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan, but he has never had to compete in the league against Barcelona. Mourinho has proven before that the Catalans are beatable in the Champions League, but over the course of a 38 game season where Barcelona’s incredible consistency is rewarded most, beating Pep Guardiola’s side is another thing altogether.
Then there is Valdano and Mourinho’s increasingly fraught relationship with the Real stalwart. Or more to the point, the non-existence of any relationship between the two. Mourinho reckoned that his power would be unchecked by Valdano when he joined Los Blancos. How wrong he has been so far. The Argentine has long been an important presence at the Bernabeu, and in the past had been critical of Mourinho, which he insisted did not matter when he arrived from Inter Milan this summer.
The pair clashed as Mourinho produced a sheet of paper on club headed paper with 13 errors the side felt the referee had made during a victory over Sevilla. Mourinho insisted that someone higher at the club should be backing him up by making these complaints instead, and demanded a personal meeting with President Florentino Perez.
The relationship has deteriorated to the point of no return in recent weeks as Mourinho has demanded a striker to help negate the loss of Gonzalo Higuain to a slipped disk. The club can barely afford to buy a big name forward like Fernando Llorente, whom they have been linked with, and Valdano told Mourinho recently that he had a perfectly good striker who he leaves on the bench, Karim Benzema.
Mourinho’s typically prickly response was “I pick the team, and if I need any help then I have my coaching staff.”
What is equally possible is that Mourinho’s public dispute with Real over the need for a striker is to create a useful and believable excuse should Real fail to dethrone Barcelona as the La Liga champions, as appears increasingly likely. For Mourinho to fail at Madrid of his own volition would to him be a damaging blow to the image he has created for himself. Sure, after the 5-0 loss to the Blaugrana earlier in the season Mourinho seemed graceful, saying that the result had been fair, but he also made comments suggesting that it was trophies at the end of the year that counted, reminding them of his victory with Inter Milan last year.
And herein lies Mourinho’s weakness. The Portuguese is probably the most self-confident and frankly arrogant man in the game, but the reality, love him or loathe him, is that he is as brilliant as he claims to be. Where he has gone wrong, is in believing that even he can overcome a team of Barcelona’s quality in a league format. Mourinho may be good, but to beat a team like Guardiola’s seems beyond even his ability. The rift with Valdano may be genuine, but it seems that Mourinho will use it both as the camouflage to hide his side’s inferiority to Barcelona and as an excuse to leave the club in the summer, but he need not. There is no shame in coming second to a team like Barcelona.
