The thinning gray hair stood out, as every other part of Jose Mourinho drooped, eyes downcast, almost dejected. His lips smacked against each other in anticipation of the electric spark of the mind, for the half-thoughts to become full sentences. “Look, I think you know me, and I think I don’t run away from responsibilities,” was his disclaimer as Geoff Shreeves questioned his team’s abysmal performance against Southampton.
Jose Mourinho can’t admit he’s wrong. It might cost him his job at Chelsea.
Nothing is ever his fault, and he’s making sure Chelsea knows it.
Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images
Then, as if a fire had been lit in his heart, the shackles of professionalism cast off, Mourinho smirked as he questioned the honesty of the referee. When Chelsea are at the top, he stated, others rejoice in their failure; now that his team is suffering it is time for the officials to be fair. To Mourinho, the elephant in the room has been exposed, the biases accounted.
What the Chelsea manager didn’t acknowledge in his rant is his own undressing. The contradictions of his words, of his philosophy and mindset and the sadness of his own tragic comedy. Pride comes before doom. Mourinho seems to feel the executioner’s ax and its specter has made him defiant. Right after laughing away the knowledge that his job security is the topic on everyone’s mind, Mourinho proffered, “If the club sacks me, they sack the best manager that this club has ever had.”
Life's cruelest weapon is its irony. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Or rather, we all become in some way the monsters that we fear and, thus, when we hate something, it is actually the reflection of ourselves in that thing that we abhor. It's not the ghost that frightens us, but our fear which summoned it. It was just a few short weeks ago that Arsenal lost to Chelsea and in that match two players, Santi Cazorla and Gabriel Paulista, were sent off. Paulista was dismissed for reacting to a predictable and habitual series of provocations by Diego Costa; Cazorla for a late, sliding tackle on Cesc Fàbregas.
After the match, Arsene Wenger would bemoan the referees’ decisions and Mourinho would, in the running theme of the season, take aim at his counterpart’s excuses and willingness to blame external circumstances. Wenger, in Mourinho’s eyes, does not win anymore. Since a manager’s quality is determined by success, Wenger is a failure, regardless of style or past history. And yet here we are now, with the Chelsea manager proclaiming that his status as a great manager remains intact in spite of failing results. It is the referees and his own players who are not up to par. Oh, and he would be happy to finish top four.
Mourinho has always won. He is The Special One. Indeed, Mourinho is special, but not without his flaws. His defensive tactics are practical until his team’s offensive struggles begin to cost them. His siege mentality works to motivate his players to play beyond their talents, to run through walls for him, until they, too, tire of the constant battles. And his arrogance is a great shield for his team and himself, until the problems become so severe that he looks a man incapable of dealing with failure.
That much is made clear when Mourinho suggests this grand conspiracy against Chelsea -- that referees, both at home and abroad in the Champions League, are afraid of being fair, even as he admits his players’ individual mistakes, lack of confidence and fighting spirit.
They are a broad but inaccurate accounting for the loss. More revealing was the dropping of several key players. The manager subbed on Nemanja Matic at halftime only to sub him off a few minutes later, and later admitted that Fàbregas is one of the players who “is playing very badly.” Even though players are performing poorly, Mourinho cannot question them as individuals. That’s not his job.
So it must be asked: If players are out of form, low on confidence and, as he says, playing with a lot of fear and without the motivation to do better, then what exactly is Mourinho’s job?
His sacking, Mourinho says, would suggest, “that bad results is the manager’s fault.” For a man who has always equated results with quality and has stepped into the spotlight when the team does well, Mourinho’s logic does not add up. If good results are due to the manager’s own special nature then shouldn’t the inverse be possible as well?
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It almost seems that Mourinho is aware of the ironic situation in which he finds himself. The man who has always been staunch in his belief that the end justifies the means, and that the end is wins and trophies, is now faced with the prospect of neither. Mourinho’s genius and personality used to allow him to look down on his colleagues’ excuses, but now his obfuscations and failures have knocked him from his perch. Where in the past Mourinho’s players proclaimed that they would die for him because of the belief that he shows in them, they are now his scapegoats who barely acknowledge his instructions.
The saddest part in his defiant rant is when Mourinho shows his humanity. After saying that this woeful period hurts him not only as a professional but two-fold because he likes Chelsea and that’s why he came back, he almost mutters, “I want to carry on, I want to carry on.” Inflating before the camera, Mourinho raises his voice again, puffing out his chest and exclaiming, “no doubt!”
A few sentences later he’s back to blaming “everybody else” and suggesting that they should assume their responsibilities. Jose Mourinho’s pride is his armor and he’ll drag the whole world down before they see him break. Even if it costs him his dream job.
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