Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Jose Mourinho is out to prove to Real Madrid, Manchester United and Manchester City that he’s still the best football manager in the world, if he ever was, by bringing back Chelsea to top of the pecking order, something even winning the Champions League couldn’t do to the club.
Even if he has to break every financial fair play rule in the book, it doesn’t matter. Rumors don’t always equal the truth, but it seems there’s quite an expensive and expansive shopping list that comes with the Portuguese manager, who says he isn’t about trashing his former place of business, but has already taken shots at Cristiano Ronaldo before his official introduction at Chelsea.
Mourinho can say he had Chelsea on his mind all he likes, but the truth is there had to be some part of him wishing Manchester United would pick up the phone and call him to be the one who replaced Alex Ferguson. But at Old Trafford, the way Mourinho carried and carries himself isn’t what they envision when they think of the future of the club.
All this “friendly” Mourinho version, showing empathy towards the Premier League and what not only became evident once he left the league. The problems he’s stirred up at Real Madrid and in the Spanish La Liga in general weren’t the cup of tea for a club that prefers industrial silence as they do their job, even if it means picking a manager (David Moyes) that isn’t as good as others.
Manchester City? Mourinho is probably eating himself from the inside that someone like Manuel Pellegrini got the job. Mourinho came to Real Madrid after Pellegrini, and did a slightly better job in the league (one championship is three years isn’t a success, regardless of the spin Mourinho supporters put on it, or the claim that he disrupted Barcelona dominance) than him, while taking the team to three Champions League finals. Much better than before, but not enough.
Last season Mourinho said that he would never manage a team like Malaga, because he needs money to make his plans work. I’m not sure if that was a dig at Pellegrini or Malaga themselves, but it actually shows Mourinho might not be such a great manager if huge spending isn’t involved. Back at Chelsea, and it looks like he’s trying to abuse the power given to him (in charge of the transfer policy) before the July transfer window even opens.
Soon, the feuds will come. Mourinho isn’t a different man, he’s simply in a surrounding he feels more comfortable with. He needs to find himself and his team an enemy because that’s his way of motivating players to achieve. That’s his way of staying in the headlines, and making sure he’s the man on the front page, and not his players, for better and for worse. Jose Mourinho is out to prove these last three years weren’t the beginning of his decline, but only a bad chapter that wasn’t his fault. It probably had something to do with a conspiracy.