What now for José Mourinho?

Today, Manchester United Football Club released a club statement which confirmed the departure of José Mourinho as Manchester United manager. Mourinho leaves the club having won 2 trophies, yet guiding Manchester United to their worst start in 28 years. Michael Carrick and Kieran McKenna will lead the first-team duties for the next 48 hours, with the club in hunt for a caretaker manager, of which will be someone whose currently not at the club, according to Sky Sports.

The decision to sack Mourinho, which will cost more than £18m, has been taken in the long-term interests of United with a regard that the club is bigger than any one individual. Mourinho is understood to have wanted his own structure, but the new manager will be appointed with a head of football above him reporting to executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward.

Mourinho is undoubtedly one of the best and greatest managers in the world yet his tenure has only damaged his credibility as someone who couldn’t get the best out of some of the best players in the world, and someone who failed to win the Premier League trophy during his tenure as manager. Mourinho was brought in to steady the ship for United but the club find themselves in the same situation that they were before they appointed Mourinho.

The main issue with Mourinho is not about whether he can still win trophies (every manager has slumps), but rather who will employ him. Despite his attempts to change his image as a “quick fix”, Mourinho has never successfully lasted more than 3 years at a football club. Should Fernando Santos depart his role as Portugal manager, the Portugal national team managerial job would be the most realistic job for Mourinho. He doesn’t have to complain about transfer funds, can work with some incredibly talented players, and the stakes aren’t as high. While Mourinho has dismissed the possibility of managing a national team in the future, it’s no longer about preference and more about finding another team to manage.

“A catalogue of failings”

• 29 July: Mourinho v pre-season tour — ‘If I was the fans, I wouldn’t come’
• 29 July: Mourinho v executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward — ‘I gave the club a list of five names a few months ago’
• 10 August: Mourinho v Woodward part two — Manager’s late attempts to sign defenders blocked
• 28 August: Mourinho v media — ‘Respect, respect, respect’
• 1 September: Mourinho v Anthony Martial — Mourinho willing to let French forward leave
• 24 September: Mourinho v Pogba part one- Questions club tactics following 1–1 draw with Wolves
• 25 September: Mourinho v Pogba part two — ‘No problems’ but ‘second captaincy’ taken away
• 26 September: Mourinho v Pogba part three — Training-ground incident
• 1 October: Mourinho v the team — ‘Some players care more than others’
• 20 October: Mourinho v Ianni — Touchline bust-up
• 7 November: Mourinho v Juventus fans — Did celebration go too far or show passion?
• 14 December: Mourinho v Man Utd team — Man Utd ‘far’ from being built in my image
• 16 December: Mourinho v Liverpool — ‘Liverpool did everything better than us’
• 18 December: Mourinho sacked

Other memorable Mourinho moments:

• January 2017: Mourinho v fans — ‘Don’t come to the theatre’
• April 2017: Mourinho v Luke Shaw — ‘He is a long way behind’
• March 2018: Mourinho v media — 12-minute speech on European record (Source: BBC Sport)

Family

But before he thinks about jumping into another job, Mourinho needs to take time off. He’s been living in a hotel for the past 36 months, with the family living elsewhere, and that environment without family or those close to him that can support him can impact the way he portrays himself. At a personal level, he needs to reconnect with his family, after all he said that the ‘most important thing [in my life] is my family and being a good father’. At least this will ease his mind for sometime and help him get away from the media’s scrutiny.

Motivation and man management

Not only that, but third season syndrome is something that always happens. If Mourinho wants to be regarded as someone who’s more than just a quick fix, than he needs to alter his man management approaches to the modern game.

In the case of Mourinho, this perhaps why he only last 3 seasons at a club, because the motivations for his players temporary. Once the players feel they’ve been treated harshly by him, they’ll turn against him and start creating a divide, and will no longer be motivated to play for him, but motivated to play in a certain way to get him sacked. As seen in the case of his second tenure at Chelsea in his third season, players such as Diego Costa no longer wanted to play under Mourinho. As a result, the team intentionally played poorly at times just to get him sacked, because at the end of the day, you can’t sack a whole squad in favour of a manager.

In the past Mourinho has revered big egos at the teams he’s managed and big characters, but once third season syndrome hits, it blows up in his face. Similar to his tactical approach, he needs to be more pragmatic, as some players have different ways of being motivated. For players like Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford, Mourinho can shout at them; players that respond well to a scolding and a cry of motivation. On the other hand, for players like Anthony Martial and Luke Shaw, Mourinho shouldn’t shout at them nor publicly call them out, but instead calmy motivate them, as though he has a hand around their back.

Mourinho’s hardline approach is, publicly at least, a contrast to the arm-around-the-shoulder, animated approaches of Guardiola and Klopp — but make no mistake they are just as ruthless when it comes to hugging players right out of the door. Schwarzer speaks again of man who is not out of his time in the modern game but a results-driven individual who could also be in tune with the game’s modern nuances, a manager with more to his approach that confrontation.

There’s a different approach to every player and Mourinho should recognise that in terms of how players get motivated: everyone is different.

“These guys wanted to be pushed. They could handle the manager being upset, being very, very direct in his criticisms and demands.

“As a player no-one likes to be told, no-one likes to be shouted at or made an example of in front of people but I never felt the manager was doing it in a vindictive way.

“He would pick on people but he would pick on them for a specific reason. He did it because he wanted to show people no-one was exempt from criticism. Just because you’re a big name doesn’t mean you can’t be told you’ve done something wrong.

“Too often I have been at clubs where managers have danced around that and were too afraid to tell the big-name player they’d not been good enough or they weren’t putting that work in, that their level of performance wasn’t enough.

“Very rarely did a manager have the bottle to say it, whereas Jose was never afraid to say it no matter who they were.”- Mark Schwarzer on José Mourinho

Yet perhaps this is where his man management can backfire. Following several defeats throughout this season, Mourinho has taken the opportunity to call out players and slam the board for a lack of backing. Not only does he slam others for the failures of the team, but he fails to realise his own failures as his part of being a manager. But why?

Because Mourinho wants unconditional loyalty from his players, he’s giving the players an extrinsic motivation to perform; himself. While the players also can be incentivised through monetary benefits, Mourinho wants the players to play for him so then no matter what he says, they’ll follow, minimising the risk for disunity in the team. However, as proven by previous psychology research, intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation as intrinsic is durable, whereas extrinsic is temporary.

“Maybe just understanding the new generation of players. When you come with superstar status maybe you need to loosen up a little and manage the players accordingly.

“Say with Hazard or Pogba, you maybe can’t ask them to work their socks off because they need to use their energy to drive the team forward, to use their skills to produce that little bit of magic they have that others don’t have.

“Mourinho is demanding of them that they work equally as hard as your so-called ‘normal’ players.

“You want them to work hard but you also need them to produce their best football and sometimes you have to make exceptions for those special, talented players that you have to let them be free so maybe that part of his game he can adjust to the modern-day coaching.”- Phil McNulty

The damning stats

• United have picked up 26 points after their first 17 Premier League games, their worst points haul in the top flight at this stage since 1990–91 (26 points).
• They have conceded 29 goals in the league this season — one more than they did in the whole of the 2017–18 campaign (28).
• They are 19 points off leaders Liverpool, 11 points off the top four and closer to the relegation zone than the top of the table.
• They have one win in six league games and a goal difference of zero.
• Liverpool’s 19-point advantage over United is their biggest after the first 17 games of a top-flight season.
• Liverpool had 36 shots on Sunday — the most United have faced in a Premier League match since Opta started recording shot data in 2003–04.

Mourinho’s abrasive style has led to repeated patterns of brushes with authority, clashes with players, and eventually his departure from clubs he has elevated to success. Mourinho has had so much success he may feel no need to alter the style that has brought him trophies — but will he ever again get a club of the stature he has enjoyed at clubs such as Chelsea, Inter, Real and United?

So is there still a place for this confrontational, challenging style, or will he need to acquire a measure of reinvention when he emerges again?