Mourinho the manager who threw everyone under a bus

Jose Mourinho departs renowned for two things: winning and, when he couldn’t, finding someone else to blame.

Jose Mourinho leaves the Lowry Hotel in Manchester after being sacked by United

The summons to be sacked on Tuesday was surely the last we will see of Jose Mourinho managing in England. He departs renowned for two things: winning and, when he couldn’t, finding someone else to blame, to throw under the bus.

Miss him? Not those Manchester United players he frequently denigrated this season; not the fans enduring football so laborious that Bobby Charlton and Alex Ferguson in the directors’ box struggled to hide their grimaces.

As for the media, we will cope. For all the idea that Mourinho was “box office”, and newspapers endlessly grateful for his increasingly acerbic press conferences, the drama had ebbed long ago. It is much less of a story when you know the ending.

Mourinho was a man waiting to be sacked for weeks, months even. His agent had even been reminding United just how much it would cost — about £16 million ($28m).

The greats of sport shape events — and Mourinho had that power once — but his has become a career of diminishing returns, by his own exceptional standards. He was special, once.

It was always going to conclude at United as it had, twice, at Chelsea where he was kicked out of Stamford Bridge but only having set fire to the building first: falling out with players and hierarchy to the point where people had stopped looking forward to coming to work, or to watching them.

We all saw it coming at United, and at about this time, give or take a month or two. It was instructive to read back the report of Mourinho’s second Chelsea sacking in December 2015, about “the self-immolating tendencies” and whether United would ever come calling for a manager with a three-season expiry. Senior Old Trafford figures had already ignored him in 2013 because they believed that he was more trouble than he was worth.

With the club finishing fifth under Louis van Gaal in 2016, Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman, could not resist the instant gratification of a big name. Perhaps he felt the choice vindicated by two trophies in the first season, the League Cup and Europa League, followed by second place in May. But the reality is that United are no nearer to solving the post-Ferguson convulsions and never were going to get there under a manager whose rental of a hotel apartment was just one telling sign of his impermanence.

Not every team can win a trophy and there is plenty to be said for the building processes under Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, at Tottenham Hotspur under Mauricio Pochettino and Maurizio Sarri’s tactical reshaping at Chelsea which, more than two years on, had simply not happened for United under Mourinho despite spending almost £400m. Whatever United’s boardroom failings, he did not lack support.

The key question is simple, and damning. Which players improved under Mourinho at United? Any? Instead, there was a misfit in Alexis Sanchez, a World Cup-winner in Paul Pogba who could not get a game, and ragged confidence in the best of the homegrown, Marcus Rashford.

As well as being vastly paid superstars, footballers come riddled with insecurities about form and the judgments rained on them. A good manager inspires, educates and protects.

But who at United will speak fondly of the impact he had on their career? Mourinho’s constant running-down of his players, for his self-protection, was bound to erode collective confidence.

How revealing that Mourinho saved his most positive words for Andrew Robertson, a Liverpool left back, after what turned out to be his last game, a battering at Anfield when United looked as bereft of strategy as at any time since Ferguson departed.

At one team talk recently, the United manager told his squad that they “had not seen the real Mourinho”, meaning the dynamic winner, the successful leader of the Cult of Jose. Whatever happened to him?

Mourinho has always been the most risk-averse of leading managers — scorning the “poets” — but his best teams had an organisation and, especially, an intensity that could make them irresistible, certainly to play against.

In 2004, he arrived in England with a conviction that anything was possible. At Chelsea, he inspired Frank Lampard to become one of Europe’s great midfielders; found a striker in Didier Drogba who terrorised defences; created a side of ruthless efficiency.

There was cynicism in the tactical fouls, the endless baiting of referees and Arsene Wenger, and in his contempt for rules when UEFA banned him from the touchline and he ended up smuggled out of the dressing room in a laundry basket. But there was also excellence in his drilling of transitions — no team was more adept at stopping, or launching counter-attacks — and he revelled in his time around his players. But not now.

Where does the sourness come from? How, at 55, did he become this grumpy old man? Perhaps in knowing that he could not win the big prizes; in finding himself in Pep Guardiola’s shadow; in being overtaken by smart young managers with fresher plans and more energy. And if he cannot win, he provokes arguments, deflects the blame.

He has been sacked as an act of liberation; freeing players of an antagonistic atmosphere; allowing Woodward finally to go about appointing a technical director; enabling United to try their fourth reboot since Ferguson’s retirement.

For Mourinho, after seven full seasons and three curtailed campaigns, his time in England comes to an end with nine trophies — three titles, an FA Cup, four League Cups and Europa League — and three sackings.

Across his career, he has won more trophies as a coach than Rinus Michels, Sir Matt Busby, Bob Paisley or Brian Clough. He has been one of the most successful managers of all time but when we are totting up the qualities of the greats, finding his place in the pantheon, we will have to factor in the destructive finales and a belief that winning was all that mattered. He may have got away with that for a time at United but he was never going to be loved.

It is what always made him a wrong fit.

“There is a mystique and a romance about (United) which no other club can match,” he said when agreeing to a three-year contract in May 2016. But when was Mourinho ever an idealist?

Winning would have been good enough given the post-Ferguson travails but United were floundering. Mourinho was even being deserted by his loyal sidekicks with Rui Faria, his long-time assistant, leaving even without another job to go to.

So what next? No doubt there will be a wealthy European club willing to stoke the embers of his career and see if there is any spark left. One day he will end up managing the Portugal national team.

International football has the advantage that the players will only see Mourinho every few months. After a while, too much of him is more than anyone can bear.

THE TIMES