Jose Mourinho’s ‘violent’ years of Real Madrid infamy, and his Champions League return – The Athletic
The Athletic has live coverage of Real Madrid vs. Benfica from UEFA Champions League.
Tonight’s Champions League match between Real Madrid and Benfica sees Jose Mourinho return to the Bernabeu for the first time since his turbulent spell at the Spanish club from 2010 to 2013.
He does so in dramatic circumstances. Last Tuesday’s knockout phase play-off first leg between the teams saw Mourinho sent off for protesting from the sidelines during a 1-0 defeat for his Portuguese side. After the game, he made headlines around the world with his comments about the alleged racist abuse of Madrid forward Vinicius Jr by Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni.
Mourinho first told Vinicius Jr on the pitch that nobody at Benfica could do anything racist. Afterwards, he appeared to accuse the 25-year-old of provoking a reaction when celebrating the game’s only goal. UEFA is investigating the allegations of racist abuse, which Prestianni, who was provisionally suspended on Monday, has denied.
“I told him (Vinicius Jr) that when you score a goal like that, you just celebrate and walk back,” Mourinho said on Amazon Prime.
“When he was arguing about racism, I told him that the biggest person in the history of this club is Black. This club, the last thing that it is, is racist. There is something wrong because every stadium where Vinicius plays, something happens. Always.”
Mourinho’s time as Madrid coach was so tempestuous that, in some ways, its effects are still being felt. In a press conference last week, the 63-year-old described those three years as “tough, intense, almost violent”.
His ghost has never really left the Bernabeu. President Florentino Perez never publicly disavowed his divisive actions — and his former loyal soldier Alvaro Arbeloa replaced Xabi Alonso as manager in January.
Deep and lasting cracks opened during Mourinho’s Madrid era, and relationships with legendary players including Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo were never properly fixed.
Mourinho’s suspension has denied the Bernabeu fans a chance to voice their opinions about their former boss during Wednesday’s match.
But you only need to look back at what happened to understand why he was already a controversial figure, even before last week’s events in Lisbon.
Mourinho arrived at Madrid in the summer of 2010 as arguably the highest-profile manager in world football. His Inter side had just won the European treble, with that year’s Champions League title coming after a dramatic victory over Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona in the semi-finals.
“I don’t know if I was born to coach Real Madrid, but I was born to be a football manager,” Mourinho said at his Bernabeu presentation. “And I like big challenges. I’ll soon build a team with its own identity and future.”
Madrid took 32 points from their first 12 La Liga games, but Mourinho was already getting involved in regular spats. At press conferences, he rowed with local reporters over opportunities for homegrown youngsters — “Pedro Leon is not Zidane or Maradona” — and insulted the Sevilla manager: “Who is Gregorio Manzano? I don’t know him.”
Responding to criticism of such behaviour, Madrid director and former player Emilio Butragueno said: “We didn’t sign Mourinho to make friends, but to win trophies.”
Madrid went into the season’s first Clasico a point ahead of Barcelona at the top of La Liga. A whopping 5-0 defeat at the Camp Nou in November 2010 seemed a big setback, but the politically savvy Mourinho used the humiliation to gain more power — sidelining sporting director Jorge Valdano, a former Madrid player and coach who symbolised the club’s old-time values.
Mourinho also pressed publicly for greater backing in the transfer market. “If you go hunting with a dog, you catch more than if you go hunting with a cat,” he said, in an attempt to publicly pressure Perez to sign an upgrade on Karim Benzema, then aged 22 and in his second season at the club.
That spring brought four Clasicos in 17 days, with the whole football world watching. A 1-1 home draw on April 16 all but guaranteed the league title for Barcelona. Cristiano Ronaldo’s extra-time header decided a tight and physical Copa del Rey final in Madrid’s favour four days later.
Ahead of the teams’ Champions League semi-final first leg on April 27, Mourinho sarcastically called out Guardiola for criticising referees who got decisions correct. The Catalan responded in the Bernabeu press room later that day.
“He’s the f*****g boss in this room, the cleverest man in the world,” he said. “We were together for four years at Barcelona. He knows me and I know him.”
Pep Guardiola and Mourinho shake hands at the Bernabeu in April 2011 (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)
The game at the Bernabeu was scoreless when Madrid defender Pepe was sent off. Lionel Messi then scored twice, including a superb solo goal, to give his side a 2-0 advantage. Afterwards, Mourinho angrily claimed there was a conspiracy against him, one involving six different referees, UEFA, the Spanish football federation, and even then Barca shirt sponsor UNICEF.
“Guardiola is a fantastic manager, but he won a Champions League with a scandal at Stamford Bridge, and if he wins again, this will be the Bernabeu scandal. I’d be ashamed to win like this,” Mourinho said at an extraordinary press conference.
UEFA fined Mourinho €50,000 and banned him for five games, which was reduced to three on appeal. Barcelona went on to win the Champions League after a 1-1 draw in the second leg and a 3-1 victory over Manchester United in the final. But many Madrid supporters — and Perez — accepted his ultra-confrontational approach, and Mourinho continued to dial up the tension and conflict.
In the following August’s Supercopa de Espana second leg at the Camp Nou, Messi’s late strike put Barca 5-4 ahead on aggregate. In added time, a Marcelo foul on Cesc Fabregas sparked a touchline melee, during which Mourinho poked then-Barca assistant coach Tito Vilanova in the eye.
After the game, Mourinho referred to Vilanova as Pito — slang in Spanish for penis.
Despite widespread furore over his actions, Mourinho refused to apologise, and text messages from his spokesperson, Eladio Parames, to reporters suggested he could resign over a lack of support from the Madrid hierarchy. Parames later said the messages were not sent by him — that an old phone number of his was being used without his knowledge.
Mourinho released a statement via Madrid’s website saying there was “no way” he was leaving. It added: “I also wish to apologise to Madridistas, and only to them, for my attitude in our last game.”
Hardcore fans at the Bernabeu backed Mourinho, and a banner saying “Mou — your finger points us the way” stayed at the stadium through the autumn.
But some at the club, including captain Iker Casillas, felt their coach had gone too far and reached out to Spain colleagues at Barcelona. “I called Xavi because it was my duty and responsibility, because we were making mistakes and screwing things up,” Casillas later told El Pais.
Mourinho was furious at what he viewed as a betrayal. Casillas was temporarily dropped from the team, with the coach explaining it was because the goalkeeper had felt “untouchable” and allowed his standards to drop.
When Barcelona won 3-1 at the Bernabeu on December 10, Mourinho was whistled by many fans at the stadium who appeared to back their ’keeper against their coach.
Mourinho in the Real Madrid dugout in December 2011 (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)
“I understand Madridismo, but I don’t listen to it,” Mourinho said that night. “(Zinedine) Zidane has been whistled here, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo. Why not me, too?”
The following month, after Madrid were knocked out of the Copa del Rey quarter-finals by Barcelona, Mourinho waited in the Camp Nou car park to harangue referee Fernando Teixeira Vitienes, who booked seven Madrid players and sent off Ramos late in the game.
But the tense atmosphere appeared to galvanise the Madrid team, in La Liga at least. Ronaldo’s emphatic winner in a 2-1 Camp Nou Clasico victory on April 21 effectively sealed the league title. Madrid ended up setting a new record for most points in a season, with 100 — a marker Barca matched the following campaign. The 121 goals that Madrid team scored remains unmatched.
However, there was more pain in the Champions League, with Bayern Munich winning a semi-final penalty shootout at the Bernabeu. Mourinho leveraged that defeat to demand further concessions from Perez, including greater control of transfers. It also saw Zidane demoted from his role as sporting director to a new job at the academy.
But during Mourinho’s third season at the Bernabeu, tensions finally reached breaking point.
Madrid started the 2012-13 campaign by winning just one of their first four La Liga games. Mourinho publicly blamed his players.
“At this moment I have no team,” he said in a press conference after losing to Sevilla in September. By this stage, Xabi Alonso and Arbeloa were among the very few senior players still backing their boss, with even fellow Portuguese stars Ronaldo and Pepe now upset with their coach.
The relationship with the local media also became caustic, with Mourinho boycotting press conferences and sending assistant Aitor Karanka instead. In January 2013, Marca reported that Casillas and Ramos told Perez “it’s him or us” at a training ground meeting. Mourinho reacted by again threatening to leave, but relented after receiving further public backing from Perez.
Mourinho’s final season at Madrid ended without a trophy (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)
Casillas was dropped completely from the team, with Diego Lopez signed as a new first-choice goalkeeper. But Barca kept control of the title race, at a time when Vilanova was receiving cancer treatment. Madrid’s squad spirit fractured completely after a 4-1 Champions League semi-final first leg defeat at Borussia Dortmund on April 24.
A few days after a third consecutive last-four Champions League exit was confirmed, Ronaldo celebrated a La Liga goal against Real Valladolid at the Bernabeu on May 4 by running to the bench and telling Mourinho to “go f**k yourself” in Portuguese.
The season’s final humiliation was losing a Copa del Rey final to neighbours Atletico Madrid at the Bernabeu, with both Mourinho and Ronaldo red-carded. Even though Mourinho still had another three years left on the contract extension he signed the previous summer, his time at the club was clearly over.
“Each coach has their own personality, their level of demands, of competitiveness,” Perez said while announcing what was described as a joint decision for Mourinho to leave.
“Has he made some mistakes? Of course, he has admitted that himself. But there’s a lot of pressure at Real Madrid, and Mourinho brought a higher level of intensity and competitiveness. We’re proud of where we are now.”
It seems remarkable that Mourinho should only now be returning to Real Madrid, almost 13 years after his acrimonious exit, and despite having managed seven Champions League campaigns since, across spells at Chelsea, Manchester United, and Tottenham.
Current Madrid coach Arbeloa is among those to publicly argue that Mourinho instilled a winning attitude which underpinned the subsequent multiple Champions League trophies under the stewardship of Carlo Ancelotti and Zidane.
Mourinho appeared to agree with the idea that his time at Madrid had been a difficult but necessary period when speaking last week.
Mourinho grabbed Vinicius Jr to speak with him after the Brazilian alleged racist abuse (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
“I’m one of the few coaches to leave Real Madrid without being fired,” he said in his press conference previewing Benfica’s home leg.
“When I decided to leave, the president told me that it will be easier now, the hard part is done, the good times are coming. Everything Real Madrid did afterwards only brought me joy. But the praise goes to those who were there and who won.”
Other players Mourinho publicly called out during his time at the Bernabeu, including Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil, have also claimed that conflict and tension helped the team understand what was required to become champions.
Last week, Mourinho also commented on the idea he could soon return as Madrid coach, especially if his team could repeat their incredible 4-2 victory of January 28, in the final round of the Champions League’s league phase.
“I don’t want to fuel stories that don’t exist,” Mourinho said. He added that he hoped Arbeloa stayed for many years, while simultaneously making public a “break clause” in his Benfica contract which he could use if he wished, before talking of a “connection that lasts forever” with the Bernabeu outfit.
But the idea of him coaching again at Madrid appears very, very unlikely now. His legacy will always be debated, but last week’s events have surely broken his connection to most at the club.
