Childish Mourinho gets it right at last: the devil's in the detail
Jose Mourinho never spoke a truer word than when he claimed, after Chelsea's exit from the Champions League in Barcelona, that at the highest level of football details can make a big difference.
What he meant - and he reiterated the view in his programme notes yesterday - was that the detail of Asier del Horno being incorrectly sent off in the first leg had handicapped Chelsea unfairly and effectively cost them the tie. Such a selective memory largely explains why a coach universally admired at the start of the season is now so unpopular across Europe. Like all unreasonable men - and Mourinho is already being nicknamed Napoleon - the Chelsea coach thinks he is right and the world is wrong. This philosophy has served many successful managers well, and football has been all the more entertaining for it, but it needs adapting in defeat or it sounds terribly similar to whingeing.
If Mourinho wants to know why his aura of cool has evaporated in recent months to be replaced by blunt accusations that he and his team lack class, he need only remember his own words. Football sees the whole picture, not just his edited version, and the devil is in the detail. Here are 10 of the details Mourinho appears to have overlooked:
1) Del Horno was not sent off in the first leg because of some eccentric whim of the referee, he was shown a red card for one of the most blatant fouls of the season on a particularly talented opponent in Lionel Messi. There are grounds for arguing that a yellow would have sufficed, though when you make a challenge as rash as that you put your fate in the hands of the referee. The fact that Chelsea had to play against Barcelona with 10 men was their own fault, no one else's. To hear Mourinho talk you would think they were innocent victims of conspiracy.
2) Barcelona came within a minute of beating Chelsea's 11 men on Tuesday at Camp Nou. The fact they didn't was down to an extremely generous penalty given for a non-existent foul.
3) Frank Rikjaard did not moan too much about that, nor did he make a meal of defeat at Stamford Bridge last season when Chelsea's winner was clearly shown to have stemmed from an illegal block that the referee missed. That's the way football goes, sometimes you don't get the breaks.
4) Mourinho cannot mention Liverpool without referring to the goal they never scored, the debatable strike by Luis Garcia that knocked them out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage last season. What he never makes clear is whether he would have preferred the alternative: a penalty to Liverpool, Petr Cech sent off, and 86 minutes still to play. At least Lubos Michel, the Slovakian referee, left 11 Chelsea players on the pitch, for which he received no thanks from Mourinho.
5) Promising 'goals, goals, goals' before the game then sending Robert Huth on as an emergency striker for the last 10 minutes in Barcelona hardly counted as inspired. Mourinho deserves credit for a bold initial selection - on very few occasions have Damien Duff, Arjen Robben and Joe Cole featured in the same starting line-up - though the plan did not work. None of those three looked like producing a goal, and Frank Lampard was wasted in a more defensive role than usual. But Mourinho still had Crespo on the bench: why not try two strikers for a while and let Duff and Robben work the flanks? Instead he rather cautiously replaced one striker with another, Didier Drogba disappearing as Crespo came on. Drogba has his limitations but surely he would have made a better partner for Crespo than a hulk like Huth, even if only for a few minutes.
6) Mourinho is neither as popular or unpopular as he thinks he is. If he thought he could draw the sting of the Barcelona crowd by walking out alone, he was wrong. By Camp Nou standards he received only a cursory boo. And if he thought he was sufficiently well in with the Barcelona players to walk down the tunnel patting them on the head, the look on the face of a surprised Carles Puyol suggested otherwise.
7) Chelsea do not deserve the unsporting reputation with which their coach has saddled them because their players do gracious defeat quite well. 'Ronaldinho is the best player in the world, everyone knows that,' Frank Lampard said in Spain. 'What amazes me is his consistency, how regularly he plays to that level, he's going to go down as one of the all-time greats. His goal was fantastic, but it didn't really change the game much. We had 90 minutes to try and score two goals and we couldn't do it. We wanted to be patient, we didn't want to rush at Barcelona because that would have been suicide, but we ended up not creating many chances. My Spanish isn't that great but I said "Good luck" to their players at the end and I meant it. They are a great team to watch, we'll just have to try again next year.'
And here's John Terry: 'I thought we were the better team in the first leg, over here we weren't quite good enough. We decided at half time to come out and really give it a go, but we couldn't break Barcelona down. We're not looking back to the first leg - we came here with 11 men and we gave them a match, we just couldn't get the vital goal. It's a great stage to play on though, and while I'm gutted to have lost, I don't mind if we get Barcelona again next year. You always want to test yourself against the best.'
8) That 'group decision' at West Brom last week. What's that supposed to mean? Does Mourinho run a democracy in the dressing room? Did players and directors talk through the issues and conduct a quick straw poll? Or did Mourinho decide he did not fancy explaining some of his earlier actions and unilaterally give the press conference a miss, pausing only to think of a grand-sounding but specious reason with which to brief his beleaguered director of communications?
9) Skipping press conferences hardly counts as the crime of the century, not when Sir Alex Ferguson does it every week and Mourinho usually sends out assistant Steve Clarke in any case. Yet even Chelsea supporters in Barcelona said they were dismayed and disappointed by what had previously occurred at the Hawthorns. Mourinho was as guilty of cheating as his centre forward in protesting furiously that Drogba had been fouled in a blatant attempt to get a West Brom player dismissed. Then, in addition to ignoring the bell to restart the second half and leaving Albion players waiting on the pitch, he petulantly and pointedly refused to shake Bryan Robson's hand at the end. This is not the behaviour expected of champions at the home of a more modest club with relegation worries. Chelsea's complete lack of class is starting to embarrass their own fans. 'Gamesmanship is one thing,' a discussion in a Barcelona restaurant agreed. 'But childishness does not impress anybody.'
10) Some Chelsea fans also suggested Gianluca Vialli's side would have won in Barcelona. This is fanciful, though it does suggest the current English champions are already looking back fondly to less successful times. Mourinho should take that as a warning, even if his team did pretty well against a terrific Barcelona side. Not enough to win, granted, but it is hard to imagine any other English team doing significantly better. Barcelona certainly seemed to respect Chelsea enough to slow down the game for an hour.
Most neutral observers knew whether the best team won or not, but at no time did Barcelona take their superiority or the result for granted. Mourinho should take that as a compliment. He is not going to be snowed under with them this week.
What he meant - and he reiterated the view in his programme notes yesterday - was that the detail of Asier del Horno being incorrectly sent off in the first leg had handicapped Chelsea unfairly and effectively cost them the tie. Such a selective memory largely explains why a coach universally admired at the start of the season is now so unpopular across Europe. Like all unreasonable men - and Mourinho is already being nicknamed Napoleon - the Chelsea coach thinks he is right and the world is wrong. This philosophy has served many successful managers well, and football has been all the more entertaining for it, but it needs adapting in defeat or it sounds terribly similar to whingeing.
If Mourinho wants to know why his aura of cool has evaporated in recent months to be replaced by blunt accusations that he and his team lack class, he need only remember his own words. Football sees the whole picture, not just his edited version, and the devil is in the detail. Here are 10 of the details Mourinho appears to have overlooked:
1) Del Horno was not sent off in the first leg because of some eccentric whim of the referee, he was shown a red card for one of the most blatant fouls of the season on a particularly talented opponent in Lionel Messi. There are grounds for arguing that a yellow would have sufficed, though when you make a challenge as rash as that you put your fate in the hands of the referee. The fact that Chelsea had to play against Barcelona with 10 men was their own fault, no one else's. To hear Mourinho talk you would think they were innocent victims of conspiracy.
2) Barcelona came within a minute of beating Chelsea's 11 men on Tuesday at Camp Nou. The fact they didn't was down to an extremely generous penalty given for a non-existent foul.
3) Frank Rikjaard did not moan too much about that, nor did he make a meal of defeat at Stamford Bridge last season when Chelsea's winner was clearly shown to have stemmed from an illegal block that the referee missed. That's the way football goes, sometimes you don't get the breaks.
4) Mourinho cannot mention Liverpool without referring to the goal they never scored, the debatable strike by Luis Garcia that knocked them out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage last season. What he never makes clear is whether he would have preferred the alternative: a penalty to Liverpool, Petr Cech sent off, and 86 minutes still to play. At least Lubos Michel, the Slovakian referee, left 11 Chelsea players on the pitch, for which he received no thanks from Mourinho.
5) Promising 'goals, goals, goals' before the game then sending Robert Huth on as an emergency striker for the last 10 minutes in Barcelona hardly counted as inspired. Mourinho deserves credit for a bold initial selection - on very few occasions have Damien Duff, Arjen Robben and Joe Cole featured in the same starting line-up - though the plan did not work. None of those three looked like producing a goal, and Frank Lampard was wasted in a more defensive role than usual. But Mourinho still had Crespo on the bench: why not try two strikers for a while and let Duff and Robben work the flanks? Instead he rather cautiously replaced one striker with another, Didier Drogba disappearing as Crespo came on. Drogba has his limitations but surely he would have made a better partner for Crespo than a hulk like Huth, even if only for a few minutes.
6) Mourinho is neither as popular or unpopular as he thinks he is. If he thought he could draw the sting of the Barcelona crowd by walking out alone, he was wrong. By Camp Nou standards he received only a cursory boo. And if he thought he was sufficiently well in with the Barcelona players to walk down the tunnel patting them on the head, the look on the face of a surprised Carles Puyol suggested otherwise.
7) Chelsea do not deserve the unsporting reputation with which their coach has saddled them because their players do gracious defeat quite well. 'Ronaldinho is the best player in the world, everyone knows that,' Frank Lampard said in Spain. 'What amazes me is his consistency, how regularly he plays to that level, he's going to go down as one of the all-time greats. His goal was fantastic, but it didn't really change the game much. We had 90 minutes to try and score two goals and we couldn't do it. We wanted to be patient, we didn't want to rush at Barcelona because that would have been suicide, but we ended up not creating many chances. My Spanish isn't that great but I said "Good luck" to their players at the end and I meant it. They are a great team to watch, we'll just have to try again next year.'
And here's John Terry: 'I thought we were the better team in the first leg, over here we weren't quite good enough. We decided at half time to come out and really give it a go, but we couldn't break Barcelona down. We're not looking back to the first leg - we came here with 11 men and we gave them a match, we just couldn't get the vital goal. It's a great stage to play on though, and while I'm gutted to have lost, I don't mind if we get Barcelona again next year. You always want to test yourself against the best.'
8) That 'group decision' at West Brom last week. What's that supposed to mean? Does Mourinho run a democracy in the dressing room? Did players and directors talk through the issues and conduct a quick straw poll? Or did Mourinho decide he did not fancy explaining some of his earlier actions and unilaterally give the press conference a miss, pausing only to think of a grand-sounding but specious reason with which to brief his beleaguered director of communications?
9) Skipping press conferences hardly counts as the crime of the century, not when Sir Alex Ferguson does it every week and Mourinho usually sends out assistant Steve Clarke in any case. Yet even Chelsea supporters in Barcelona said they were dismayed and disappointed by what had previously occurred at the Hawthorns. Mourinho was as guilty of cheating as his centre forward in protesting furiously that Drogba had been fouled in a blatant attempt to get a West Brom player dismissed. Then, in addition to ignoring the bell to restart the second half and leaving Albion players waiting on the pitch, he petulantly and pointedly refused to shake Bryan Robson's hand at the end. This is not the behaviour expected of champions at the home of a more modest club with relegation worries. Chelsea's complete lack of class is starting to embarrass their own fans. 'Gamesmanship is one thing,' a discussion in a Barcelona restaurant agreed. 'But childishness does not impress anybody.'
10) Some Chelsea fans also suggested Gianluca Vialli's side would have won in Barcelona. This is fanciful, though it does suggest the current English champions are already looking back fondly to less successful times. Mourinho should take that as a warning, even if his team did pretty well against a terrific Barcelona side. Not enough to win, granted, but it is hard to imagine any other English team doing significantly better. Barcelona certainly seemed to respect Chelsea enough to slow down the game for an hour.
Most neutral observers knew whether the best team won or not, but at no time did Barcelona take their superiority or the result for granted. Mourinho should take that as a compliment. He is not going to be snowed under with them this week.
Paul Wilson / Sunday March 12, 2006 - The Observer
posted by Dirty Dan at 6:21 PM
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