Not so Special Anymore?

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho proclaimed himself “the Special One” when he first arrived in England to manage Chelsea back in 2004. While there is no doubt Mourinho is still an excellent manager, I don’t think he still deserves the title of “the Special One”.

Mourinho’s overall résumé is fantastic. There is no debating that. He has won two UEFA Champions League titles (one with FC Porto and one Inter Milan), eight domestic league titles and seven domestic cups. However, that success has come at a price for almost every club he has managed.

Mourinho’s management style is extremely taxing on both the club and its players. He uses a small squad of players with minimal rotation. While this creates good cohesion with the unit of players on the field, with his teams usually playing at least twice a week it can be very draining for his players. This ends up leading to squad fatigue as the season wears on.

The most prominent example of this is Mourinho’s title-winning Chelsea side in 2014–2015. Chelsea were brilliant during the first half of the season. They sprinted out to a massive lead in the league and never looked back. Despite a mediocre second half of the season in which the team looked lethargic and disinterested. This would have been completely acceptable if the team recovered during the offseason and came back firing on all cylinders the next season. Unfortunately for Mourinho, the exact opposite happened.

Chelsea’s 2015–2016 campaign was an unmitigated disaster as Mourinho’s team imploded in spectacular fashion. The team went from winning the title to fighting relegation during the first half of the season and ended up finishing 10th, the worst title defence in the history of the premier league.

Mourinho was fired during the team’s awful first half of the season and continued his trend of not lasting more than 3 years at any coaching position. You have to ask why this is. Why is he wildly successful during his first 2 seasons but seems to be incapable of continuing on past that?

I believe that a large part of it is his the way he carries himself publicly. Mourinho is the most controversial manager in the history of European soccer for the things he has said in interviews. He has made countless inflammatory statements and seems to have respect for a tiny number of people outside of whichever club he is currently managing. This ends up manifesting itself not just in his words but in his behavior as well.

Mourinho acts like a petulant child when things don’t go his way. When he loses a game he blames everyone but his team — during Chelsea’s title run in 2014–2015 he had the audacity to claim, “There is a campaign against Chelsea. I don’t know why there is this campaign and I do not care.” He even gouged the eye of an opposing assistant coach after his team, Real Madrid, had a man sent off in the closing moments of a loss against Barcelona.

This attitude leads Mourinho to instill his teams with an “us against the world” mentality, another big reason why his teams flame out so quickly. Mourinho is capable of leading teams to the summit but once they get there his message grows stale. And once the players stop listening, they turn on him. Mourinho’s last two locker rooms have revolted on him and forced him out of his job. At Real Madrid there was a mole leaking team-news, strategies and line-ups to the press well before games. At Chelsea the team simply quit on him and gave him minimal effort on the pitch.

If Mourinho rotated his squad more these things might change, but until he does so, he is probably never going to be long for any job. By rotating his squad, he could create competition for spots within the team ensuring the players are always giving their all to fight for a place in the team. This lack of rotation has the knock-on effect of Mourinho never giving an opportunity to young players. Two years ago Chelsea sold a brilliant young talent, Kevin de Bruyne, solely because Mourinho wouldn’t play him. Today, de Bruyne is one of the best players in the world and he is playing for a rival club in Manchester City.

Don’t get me wrong, despite all of this, Jose Mourinho is still a great manager. However, his success comes with some asterisks. He has spent £619 million ($750 million) on players. More than any other manager in the history of soccer. I would hope that any manager that has spent that much money has found success. Mourinho is fantastic but he should not be in the conversation for being the greatest of his era let alone of greatest of all-time.