Jose Mourinho aced the audition – now the dress rehearsal for his Real Madrid return
There is a growing feeling that Real Madrid will re-appoint Mourinho as coach at the end of the season and this Champions League tie against his Benfica is the perfect proving ground
If Jose Mourinho is currently the last figure that Alvaro Arbeloa and some of Real Madrid’s players want to see, that isn’t quite the case for the hierarchy. They’re warming to him again.
Madrid president Florentino Perez never went off him, of course. He’s still said to think Mourinho is the best coach he’s had at the club.
That’s despite the sourness of the Portuguese’s time only producing one league title, and Madrid reclaiming the Champions League itself six times since his 2013 departure.
It speaks to the hold Mourinho can have and the charisma that has defined him.
A resurgent Benfica are seeing it now, as he has restored a sharpness to the team. There’s a mettle there again, that ensured they are Portugal’s form side – if still seven points behind Porto at the top – and, of course, that they beat Madrid in that sensational final Champions League group game. Goalscorer and goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin is likely to have different expectations ahead of the two legs of this Champions League play-off round.
Before the first leg in Lisbon, Mourinho turned on that same charm, if with a few charged sentences.
Many of those from the Bernabeu contingent were struck by how different the press conference was to when he was actual manager of Madrid, when his media duties were often acrimonious affairs.
On Monday, Mourinho did acknowledge how he did “good and bad things”, but that was all within giving “everything” to Madrid.
“People respect me for that, with successes and mistakes,” insisted the Portuguese.
He was also keen to point out that he “must be one of the few coaches who have left Madrid without being sacked” and stated: “If you leave by your own decision you leave with a clean soul.”
Such a sentiment somewhat overlooks how his three years had more than run their course by the time he left in May 2013, amid a clear disconnect between coach and dressing room. They looked like a team waiting for badly-needed change.
By the same token, when it came to questions about his future, Mourinho said he didn’t “want to feed stories that don’t exist” and that there is “zero with Madrid” but that he still has “one more year with Benfica, with a very easy clause to break for both parties”.
That little nugget was, of course, just left hanging out there. It was vintage Mourinho.
And it all makes this a vintage Champions League tie, in the sense of having so much more to it than straight elimination.
It is already vintage in terms of the stature of the clubs, given how these were the first two to win the European Cup back in the 1950s and 1960s. Of the two, only Madrid have won it since then, raising questions about what exactly a former giant such as Benfica can be in the modern game.
Is it simply awkward opposition like this, offering the occasional upset? They will hope to further the momentum from that 4-2 group-stage victory, which put Madrid into this play-off in the first place.
It only deepened the doubt over the coaching situation, since no one expects Alvaro Arbeloa to be there next season.
“I would very much like to eliminate Madrid but that Arbeloa wins the league and continues a long time with Madrid,” Mourinho said of his former player, in that obsequious manner he sometimes puts on. “He's a great guy and he deserves it.”
That is yet another narrative strand to this tie, given how Arbeloa was seen as one of Mourinho’s main lieutenants when a right-back during his tense reign at Madrid.
It’s funny how things turn... and possibly go full circle.
As Mourinho referenced in this press conference, there is a growing feeling that Madrid will eventually turn to him at the end of the season. The Trubin game was already seen as an audition, and this may well be a dress rehearsal.
Another victory would only bolster the argument for Mourinho, at a time when so many others seem so thin.
It has already been discussed in these pages a lot how the manager market is transforming, both due to clubs removing more and more responsibility from head coaches, at the same time that tactics start to fracture. There aren’t the same big names, and there aren’t the same guarantees.
A star-led – and president-led – club like Madrid naturally take this to extremes. It was already difficult for any “systems coach” to work there, with Xabi Alonso’s abrupt departure seemingly setting such notions back years.
Little wonder they’re looking back a few years, too.
The possibility of a Mourinho return also has an even sharper edge, since his final season at Madrid was quickly seen as the first sign of a great coach falling behind the way the game was going.
His star-laden attack frequently struggled to build moves, and that in a world where Guardiola’s positional style was starting to rule the game.
It is not a coincidence that Mourinho has not won a domestic title for 10 years. He was no longer doing what was best practice.
Except now, 12 years on, best practice is no longer so obvious. The Guardiola-influenced era is fracturing, to the point the Catalan himself has used “Mourinho tactics” in games. The schedule works against attacking co-ordination.
The norms have started to shift so Mourinho’s approaches have a new value.
Those in Portugal talk of how their Super Liga is almost a smaller-scale Premier League now, led by overly controlled pressing and set-pieces.
Hence Benfica gradually stabilising to become one of the better sides.
There’s then the precedent at Madrid. Carlo Ancelotti’s career had looked to be petering out from Napoli and Everton in 2021, only for Perez to bring him back when the president had nowhere else to turn, and for the Italian to deliver two Champions Leagues.
Could Mourinho yet do the same? Could he eventually win that third Champions League, in the way he promised years ago; in the way he promised Madrid years ago?
He has to win a Champions League knockout tie first, something he actually hasn’t done in 12 years.
This would be quite the tie to end that run, and could mean so much more than surprise qualification. Many might well warm to the idea.
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