By Emma Kemp
To paraphrase Jose Mourinho, sometimes you just know. A five-minute conversation was all it took to be sure he and Roman Abramovich were “ready to marry again” in 2013. He asked Chelsea’s former long-time Russian oligarch owner: “Do you want me back?” (a loaded question even before adding Jose’s bespoke brand of anti-humility). Abramovich asked Mourinho if he was also, well, keen. And that was that.
The fire, combustible as it had been when the Portuguese manager departed under acrimonious circumstances five-and-a-half years earlier, still burned bright. Mourinho had led the Blues to back-to-back English Premier League titles in 2004-05 and 2005-06 – the club’s first top-flight titles in 50 years – and returned on a declaration of love and an assertion that “they need stability, stability I hope I can give them”.
Given what we know now (see Manchester United, Tottenham etc), it is kind of wild to consider that Mourinho’s second coming at Chelsea was one of the more statistically successful seen in sport. In cold, hard data, he won the Premier League and League Cup in his second season back. Except then he started a bin fire months into their title defence, overseeing a team who tallied 11 points from their opening 12 league games and leaving “by mutual consent” four months into a new four-year contract.
There are a couple of mitigating factors here, including Abramovich’s fondness for (many) high-drama break-ups and Mourinho’s strong links with the unenviable third-season syndrome. But this famous double-divorce is still worth another look given South Sydney’s public pursuit of Wayne Bennett less than a day after sacking Jason Demetriou. The two men are incomparable, but the situations are not. And history offers mixed results regarding coaches who return to their former clubs.
Jose Mourinho during his first stint with Chelsea.Credit: AP
The phenomenon across numerous sports appears to be thus: coach achieves good-to-excellent results at a club and wins over players, fans and administration. Coach leaves club and works elsewhere. Club, at a later date, evokes happy memories of coach and predicts he/she will make everything right again because he/she did so last time.
The obvious flaw with this kind of nostalgia is that the person rarely meets the expectations of the happy memories. Memories, by their very nature, are distorted over time. Often softened and discoloured into nice, inoffensive shades. For the coach in question, the rosy retrospection leaves them with little room to move or else be deemed a second-time failure.
Variables to the above are countless and wide-ranging. Clubs and leagues evolve so quickly in tactics and management style that some former favourites get left behind the times. Playing rosters, owners and administrations change. Some coaches suit a stiff challenge and others relish improving on established success. Some are young, some are old, some run a tight ship and others encourage freedom. Whatever the situation, statistics seem to warn against getting back with an ex.
Data compiled by the Premier League last year showed most returning managers struggled to repeat the levels of performance achieved during their first spell at a club. At that point only Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth and David Moyes at West Ham United had better points-per-match returns from their second tenure compared to their first. Among the less successful were Mourinho and Guus Hiddink at Chelsea, Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace, Kevin Keegan at Newcastle.
Liverpool’s favourite son, Kenny Dalglish, became player-manager at Anfield in 1985 and oversaw a period of dominance including three Division One titles and two FA Cups. When he returned two decades later to rescue the Reds following Hodgson’s days, he won the League Cup but finished the league in eighth and left 18 months later with the club still in crisis.
Other numbers have been crunched online across European leagues, rugby and American sports such as the NFL and NBA. The general trend is similar. Sometimes the results are close, such as in the AFL where David Parkin won two flags with Carlton between 1981 and 1985 and one between 1991 and 2000. Or Des Hasler, who took Manly to two premierships in 2008 and 2011 and between 2019 and 2022 managed semi-final and preliminary-final appearances but did not go all the way.
Eddie Jones did not shine for the Wallabies the second time around.Credit: Getty
Sometimes they are ongoing. Ross Lyon, who took St Kilda to the 2009 and 2010 AFL grand finals during his first stint with the club, started his second tenure with a sixth-place finish in 2023 but this year has them languishing in 14th. Warren Gatland has not shone in his return to Wales, whom he coached to three Six Nations Championships and two runners-up finishes, only to come second-last in 2023 and then record their second wooden-spoon finish in 21 years.
And sometimes they are a net negative. Eddie Jones, in his calamity of a second stint as Wallabies coach, appeared so obsessed with asking his squad to “remember this feeling, boys” every time they lost that he either needed a new line or really, really just wanted Rugby Australia to take one key learning from its decision to rehire him in the first place.
Sometimes, however, it just works. Jupp Heynckes has had four spells with Bayern Munich, winning the German treble in during his third in 2012-13 and another Bundesliga in his fourth in 2017-18. Carlo Ancelotti won the 2013-14 UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid and another upon return in 2021-22 – and could yet claim another this year.
Jason Demetriou (left) learned straight from the Wayne Bennett handbook as his assistant at South Sydney.Credit: Getty
In league, Ivan Cleary was sacked by Penrith in 2015 after narrowly avoiding the wooden spoon. In 2019, his first season back with the Panthers, his second tenure appeared to be heading in a similar direction when the club missed out on finals for the first time since he was last at the helm. One grand final and three consecutive premierships later, it is difficult to argue a case for any alternative. Penrith’s hegemonic status is almost indistinguishable from Cleary. In sport-speak, he is a part of the club’s DNA.
In the modern NRL era, the closest thing Souths have to DNA is Michael Maguire, who did what no coach had in the 43 years before their 2014 premiership and the almost decade since. The new NSW Blues coach is a left-field candidate to return with a whole lot of variables, including the fact he himself was sacked by Souths in 2017 (and again by Wests Tigers in 2022). As it happens, the closest thing the Rabbitohs have to a title since Maguire’s days is the 2021 grand final – under Bennett.
Nostalgia, in Bennett’s respect, could well play a positive part if his relationship with the players is good. The recent upheaval in Redfern will have further affected the dressing room, and Bennett was particularly influential with the out-of-sorts Latrell Mitchell.
The great irony, should Bennett agree to return, is that Demetriou completed his training straight from the Wayne Bennett handbook. He passed the coursework exam and then started his solo placement. Then, when the club encountered challenges, no one wanted the registrar to operate when they had already had a good experience with the head surgeon and he might yet be available again next year. Bennett, grizzly and enduring, might yet enter with his steady hand and fix the whole mess in the short term. But to what end? The disarray Bennett generally leaves in his wake is more well-documented than any of the above.
And what will occur when, in several years’ time, once Demetriou has reflected and rehabilitated, gained experience and possibly even become desirable once more? All it would take is one club to take a punt and he’d be back in the dating pool. From there, it’s only one good season before he is in demand. The newspapers would write the redemption stories; they would label the trials and tribulations of 2024 as his pivotal moment, his epiphany propelling him to future accomplishments. The prodigal son might be summoned back to South Sydney having seen the light. We won’t know any of that until Souths decide whether to rekindle their latest old romance.
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