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Being a Madrid and Real Madrid biased newspaper is one thing, but actually giving Jose Mourinho the Miguel Muñoz award, establishing, at least to its readers, online and on actual paper, that he was the best head coach in the La Liga for the 2010-2011 season is an absolute joke.
When the headline first crossed my eyesight, I thought it was a The onion kind of joke. But it wasn’t. The head coach who lied, made excuses all year long, even asked for more players after getting €56.5 million to spend on Di Maria, Canales (loaned out to Valencia now), Pedro Leon (loaned out to Getafe now), Sami Khedira (relative failure), Ricardo Carvalho and Mesut Ozil, while already having Cristiano Ronaldo, Gonzalo Higuain, Karim Benzema, Xabi Alonso, Kaka and others in his squad, was the best in Spain?
For What? For finishing second, behind Barcelona and Pep Guardiola? For failing to beat Barcelona, making it six league matches in a row without beating their greatest rivals? For getting thrashed 5-0 at the Nou Camp, something that hasn’t happened in 16 years?
Real did finish with 92 points, “only” four points behind Barcelona. But most of the Spanish league is a joke, and in the two horse race he lost. Were the garbage time victories over Sevilla, Villareal, Almeria and Getafe an indication to who is mastermind ability to navigate through the difficult minefield that is the La Liga? I thought it was an opportuinity for Cristiano Ronaldo to boost his scoring record.
By the way, Ronaldo got the Pichichi trophy in the same ceremony, for something objective – Most goals scored. Mourinho? Subjective, and clearly biased. Marca couldn’t lie about the di Stefano award, giving it to Lionel Messi for a third straight year. Ironically, Alfredo di Stefano was the one who awarded Mourinho his coaching award.
Jose Mourinho was pretty quiet during the summer, but everything exploded after the Super Cup loss to Barcelona, peforming amateurish eye surgery on Tito Vilanova and later apologizing only to Real Madridistas, talking about how he hates hypocrites and what not. A true knight of justice and truth. I know the Marca support Real Madrid, and in Spain it’s all about Barcelona backing newspapers and Madrid backing media outlets. So what. Why lie to your readers and soccer fans, who clearly know there’s no way Mourinho deserves the best coach of the year award? In other years? Sure. With Inter, with Chelsea, with Porto. He might be the best in the world, a soccer genius.
But not last year. Last year, as all of the last three were, belonged to Barcelona, Lionel Messi, and Pep Guardiola.
24 responses to “Not a Joke – Jose Mourinho Wins Coach of the Year in Spain”
i think you are wrong, he does deserve it, he came to the new team he brough some new players it takes time to gel and get everyone to play together and after so long he finally got far in CL and he won Cup Del Rey where he beat Barcalona, and if it wasnt for refs they would of beat Barca in CL too, Khedira was great signing not even close to the falier. Guardiola had established squad who could play with out a coach, they been together for years players now each other better then they own families so its not hard for him to have this harmony where they can pass tick-tock, but just wait and see this year Madrid will beat Barca to all titles
Clearly Sportige isn’t doing a good enough job of filtering out what is good journalism which in definition is unbiased reporting of facts. I wonder how this article could be allowed in any sport news website. Does Sportige have any good moderators or do they let just about anyone post their severely biased opinions and let contributors callously glean over facts? What “Riven” has posted was not objective, rather it felt like a ranting of a Barcelona fan. Next time “Riven”, if you want to contribute something to this website, tread cautiously and consider the readers who waste their time going through this trash before banging on your keyboard.
So Riven, you seem so smart about Mourinho.
Tell me what have you yourself won? lol
sheeeesh! you are a dime a dozen armchair soccer reporter…what success have you achieved?
Get over it man! El Special One rules. Let’s not go into the memorable antics of Sen Guardioli et co – diving, feinging injury, pressuring refs and complete meltdown at press conferences. Their days are numbered and they know it!
You are a absolute joke!!!, You stated all the bad things but have you considered the good things, also you have to see the diffrence Mourinho made to real madrid not if he beat Barcelona. The title mourinho earned is not a ‘you are better than Barcelona’ trophy. Its a trophy for the coach who has made the biggest impact on his team during the last season. Last season Real Madrid beat Lyon for the first time since 10 years and went to the Champions semi finals which hasnt real madrid either done. Secondly, Madrid hasnt won the Copa Del rey for 30 years gues what Mourinho camee he won it, Madrid hasnt beaten barcelona since 4 years gues what Mourinho came he beat them and drawed. Im not sure if you understand what the trophy is for.
@Everyone Were you guys pleased with Mourinho taking Real Madrid to second place? Are you guys pleased with Real Madrid playing a brutal and defensive style every-time they face Barcelona? Isn’t the Marca award for what happens in the La Liga? Didn’t Real Madrid finish second the year before, and the year before that? Mourinho’s a great manager, always was, always will be, there’s no doubt. His personality and ego get in the way sometimes. His actions made him, at least through the media, bigger than the team. It might work in some places, but no star or head coach should be bigger than the club he’s working for.
Undoubtedly Riven, you are a hardcore Barcelona fan… fanatic
Well I think the narrator is totally Phsyco and Lunatic I Just Wasted my time in ready this piece of crap.
Tell you what Riven,
The only thing I can grant you is that Barcelona is such a good club and I as a Real Madrid fan concede to you that it is currently the best club in the world……all because of Lionel Messi. Without Messi, Barcelona is nowhere. Pep is nowhere.
But everything else you say about Real Madrid and Mourinho is wrong. Real’s record under Mourinho as compared to the past years proves it.
But since you are the armchair soccer “expert” and we the spectators are no “expert”, the day Mourinho topple Barcelona again…and it will be soon…..you come back to this column and apologise to us all here for your mistakes in your report and promise never open your big ignorant mouth again. You change your job OK? lol
The Review Is A Great Joke….LOL What Pep Has Got Is A Better Team Than RM…..RM Hasnt Reached The Quaters Of UCL For Nearly 4 Years Until Last Year But When Mourinho Came,He Took Them Till Semis And This Time He Will Make Them Better Although I Want ManUtd To Win…..Pep Cnnot Be Compared To Jose!!!!”The Special One”!!!!!!!
How much did the one eyed catalan press pay you to write this sh_t? Pep and his band of actors may have won almost all the trophies but JM had to take start with a new team in his first season in La Liga so I think it is correct to award it to him…but I guess you need to please your pay masters?
Hey dude, are you serious or are you just plain stupid?? Barca are nothing but bunch of cry babies who are in bed with all the so call righteous organisations not to mention all the corrupt officials from UEFA to FIFA and now they got Bill Gates and his foundation involved??? Mourinho is no saint but pound for pound he is the best coach in the business, Pep needs to coach other teams to stake that claim!! Now go say 10 “Hail Marys” and may the lord have mercy on your soul. Hala Madrid
i wasted my time in reading this shit!
shit this article..look at the coach like frank rijard..how many tite tha he win..and just ask pep go to another club..then we look…
“Real’s record under Mourinho as compared to the past years proves it.”
Ummmm, he finished with less points than Pellegrini, having spent an additional i-don’t-even-know-how-much on new players. I guess they played better than the RM in Schuster’s last season, but Schuster did not have 250 million in new players, and in his penultimate year Schuster won La Liga. Furthermore, Mourinho’s RM plays dirtier than … welll… ever, and was humiliated by Barça in such a way that will not soon be forgotten (the 1994 5-0 pales in comparison to the 2010 level of utter domination). Yes, he won the Copa del Rey, the team’s first trophy in a few years, and he did it against Barça. But I don’t think winning the cup competition makes up for all the ways in which he’s brought the club down. If, as some of you say, the award goes to the team that’s improved the most, how about Pellegrini’s Malaga, which rose from 17th to 11th place under his tenure? In rankings, that is by far the best improvement in the league. I know it’s not that hard to go from 17 to 11 in La Liga with the money that Malaga started throwing around, but unlike Mourinho, there were more positives than negatives in Pellegrini’s season.
Pellegrini did better in the league than mourinho did, and he got fired. The point of this article was to state the fact that Mourinho was far from the better coach LAST year. Suffering “the worst defeat” of his career does not make you top coach. I think the guy who handed you the worst defeat, won the league, and won the CL, deserves the award. But marca is a joke, and everyone knows it; so I expected nothing less.
to the people who commented on this article calling Riven an armchair fan; you’re just the same. you yourselves personally have not won anything, neither has Riven, neither have I. So STFU about who the expert is. This award was clearly subjective and ridiculous to claim that Mourinho was the better man last year. RM’s own poster boy, di stefano hates what Mourinho is doing to the club. I love the players at RM, and feel bad that they have to deal with a nut job like Mourinho.
I can’t believe the comments here. Total biased Madrid fans. Do you remember who finished first last season? The 5-0 loss to Barcelona looks great on Mourinho’s “coach of the year” season. Pep OWNS Mourinho, and Mou can’t take it. What a terrible image he’s given Real Madrid.
I’m glad the comments here haven’t been ALL Real Madrid fans. I think that the point was missed. It’s not that Jose Mourinho isn’t a great head coach, something pointed out numerous times during the article. He just wasn’t the BEST LAST SEASON. If you talk about impact, keeping Real Madrid at second place – that just isn’t enough of an impact, because Real Madrid is a club that’s never satisfied with less than second place. He didn’t do badly I guess, but didn’t do well enough, sorry.
@Riven, the point is clear, Pep Guardiola is a good coach but he has only known one club namely FC Barcelona! To compare both coaches on their achievements is misleading and very biased in favour of Guardiola and Barcelona. Mourinho may not be the angel that Gaurdiola personifies and according to some pundits Real Madrid are dirty players, but the reality is that Barcelona players are just as dirty and you can add racist and cheats to that jibe as well but thats all in the past, so can we expect the same this season? As a football fan I hope so but I also hope that the standard of refreeing is better because it looked very dubious the way that Barca were protected by UEFA and the refs through out the UCL? Gives you food for thought don’t you agree?
Guardiola is much better than Mourinho. The RM fans talk as if Jose is taking over a poor team with poor finances, RM spent hundreds of millions of euros in recent years to catch up with Barca, yet Mourinho still FAILED BIG TIME. Whatever Real Madrid does this year DOES NOT MATTER, this award is for the past year in which Barca won the league and the Champions League, and almost got their second treble in three years. If Mourinho can achieve even close to that this year, then he can be considered to be worthy of the award.
Barca this and Barca that, blah, blah, blah get over yourselves. The Mou is and will always be the special one. If you want to talk stats then let me remind you that 4 European cups is still a long way from the 9 cups that Real have. Oh! lets not forget that Real have won La Liga more times than any team in Spain. Barca fans are quick to mouth off that this Barca team is the greatest ever but this is the same team that got their arses handed to them by Inter the previous season, the Inter coached by Mou. So what if Real were beaten 5-0 by Barca. Barca have also in previous years lost to Real. Go ask Cruyff if he likes the Barca of today? Barca enjoy it while it lasts hahahahaha!
@RIVEN, I have read your column and you are absolutely correct in saying that Madrid fans have missed the point entirely but I think you have also failed in that aspect. For example what about the selection of Leo Messi as world player of the year ahead of Xavi and Iniesta, is the voting process also flawed? The reason I am asking is that Leo is a exceptional player but Spain won the world cup and Barca the European Cup so common sense tells me that it will either be Xavi or Iniesta? Argentina did not win anything and struggled to even qualify with Messi so not disrespect to Messi and Argentina who are right up there as one of the very best teams ever but you can not say the voting of Mourinho as best coach in Spain is flawed? Finishing second or third is not nothing to be ashamed of. You delight in the fat that Madrid were thumped by Barca but you forget that Barca having been playing together for a long time.
@JA You’ve got a good point mate, but I’d still pick Messi as the best player during the last season, despite the Copa America. I think his failure with the Argentinian national team has more to do with the teammates. Sure, Xavi and Iniesta allow Messi to be as great as he is, but when you get down to it, at least the way I see it, he still has to be this amazing week in and out, which he manages to be most of the time.
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