TFN editor James Dutton looks at how Jose Mourinho’s bitter experience at Real Madrid has defined his management back at Chelsea…
“The only friend I have in this dressing room is Granero… and I’m not even sure that I can trust him any more. You’ve left me all on my own. You’re the most treacherous squad I’ve had in my life. Nothing more than sons of bitches.”
Real Madrid changed Jose Mourinho. The bitter, twisted and paranoid Mourinho that has stalked the Stamford Bridge touchline since the turn of the year is not the one that departed Milan in 2010, a European champion for the second time and ready to be feted by the biggest club in world football.
Sure, Mourinho has never been a saint. At Porto and his first spell with Chelsea there was plenty of evidence of the dark, underhand tactics that so riled Graeme Souness on Wednesday night. But Madrid was a new experience for him, it challenged him in ways he had never come across before. The insubordination that he met at Real Madrid, the dressing room cliques that festered and chronically undermined his final season in the Spanish capital, have resonated with him more than anything he has ever encountered in his glittering managerial career.
He proclaimed himself “The Happy One” when he returned to West London in June 2013, but he has barely raised a smile since. Of course, he did not mean that he was literally happy – there are always undercurrents to Mourinho’s words. More it was relief that he had returned somewhere where he could command the instant respect that he had had to earn for himself at Madrid. Continue reading