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Mourinho and the relationship with journalists

Mourinho and the relationship with journalists

For many players, directors, coaches and fans, football is a tempestuous love affair with a fickle, demanding but passionate mistress. In truth the relationship ‘enjoyed’ by all parties with the media and with each other, is often little more than a marriage of convenience.
No one knows this better than the self-appointed 'Special One’, Jose Mourinho or Rob Beasley, the former Sun journalist and author of the unauthorised biography on Jose, “Up Close and Personal”.
Mourinho is indeed a fascinating man, as indeed is Rob Beasley himself, and in an intrigiuing and revealing interview with his local paper the Nuneaton News he explains the symbiotic and mutually beneficial 'back-scratching’ arrangements that frequently occur between coach and correspondent in the Macchiavellian minefield that is world football.
In an excellent scoop with the paper’s sports writer, Bobby Bridge (take a bow, Sir), Rob openly admits that ,“On many occasions José would use me to get something out there, it was a two-way street.“
“Over 12 years we were in regular contact and he would use me to find things out too.”
Their paths crossed many years earlier when Rob, himself a Chelsea fan revealed the club’s attempts to what is whimsically described as 'tap up’ a player from another club.
Rob takes up the story: “I think a key moment was the Ashley Cole tapping up story before he moved from Arsenal to Chelsea,“ said Beasley.
“There were secret meetings that I reported and it got Scoop of the Year 2005, which was a big deal for me. Something I am very proud of.
“It was big punishments all-round. Chelsea got a record fine, Ashley Cole got fined, Mourinho got fined. The FA threw the book at the agents.
“Cole and the agents shunned me. But it was different with José, he must have thought 'hmm, this guy must be good at his job’.
Typical Jose; in the words of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.”
A few years later when in charge at Real Madrid amidst an atmosphere of treachery, subterfuge and double-dealing, Mou did everythng he possibly could to expose the 'mole’ he suspected of leaking stories from an unsettled dressing room to a voracious press, most notably El Pais.
Mou’s tactics included the planting of little vignettes of information with compliant journalists to undermine certain players and people at the club and get his message out there.
In the end Iker Casillas, the man suspected by his coach as the main source of the leaks lasted longer at Real Madrid than Mou did, but in reality he was never the same at the club afterwards and the curtain came down on a lifetime’s career spent at Real Madrid that in the end saw him go from hero to zero.
In July 2015 Casillas signed a two year deal with FC Porto, a bitter, inauspicious, cruel end to what had been a stellar career for a man who had always been a 'blanco’ to the bone.
For Mourinho it’s all part of the game; victories are frequently obtained off as well as on the pitch.
Rob’s biography is flagged up as 'unauthorised’ but it would be disingenous of anyone to imagine that it has not been read, approved and rubber-stamped by the main protaganists most notably Mou himself and possibly his agent, Jorge Mendes.
Jose has enjoyed many relationships of varying duration with journalists wherever he has worked in the past. He is aware more than anyone of how vital a part they play in getting his message across.
But he is not alone and his actions can frequently be seen as an act of self-preservation, a way to communicate to the fans and to get his way or, perhaps, in the words of the wonderful former British Lions captain, Willie John McBride a way to “get your retaliation in first.”
In Rob’s book, he claims that Mou was asked top go back to Real Madrid after the departure of Carlo Ancelotti in Jose’s words to “…clean the club, sort out people like Pepe, Casillas, Ramos and Marcelo…”
That said, this was never my understanding of how events panned out and now Mourinho himself has gone on record to say that he was never approached by Florentino Perez to re-join the club in the summer of 2015 and that he would never use such derogatory words against the players.
Madrid, needless to say also denied any approach and handed the job to Rafael Benitez. The only other real contender was Zinadine Zidane. In the words of Mou: “The president thinks of Zidane by name and status only and he didn’t do s**t with Castilla”.
So who to believe? In the words of another 'Special One’, the great British wartime Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.”
And like Churchill, Mourinho is also very aware that, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
But it was after the departure of Benitez that things really got interesting. Sergio Ramos as well as Casillas had been singled out by Mou as one of the more 'looser-lipped’ members of his squad when chatting to the media. Casillas became a victim, collateral damage if you like, in a football politics war. Ramos survived and if football teaches us anything, it is that frequently, the old saying “what goes around, comes around,” rings true.
What is certain is that after the departure of Benitez, Mou WAS sounded out, there were conversations in December just before Zidane was appointed and then, as I explain in the update to my Ronaldo book which is coming out in October, Florentino Perez sat down with Ramos and Ronaldo to discuss just who the new man in the Bernabeu hot seat should be.
Prior to that Perez had conducted any number of unofficial polls among the games movers and shakers, including journalists, to try to ascertain the mood regarding the new manager.
Then in separate conversations with with the two players - each clearly group leaders in the club’s playing hierarchy - Perez was told unequivocably by both players that they wanted Zidane in charge.
Were there doubts about Zidane’s ability to do the job? Of course there were, but that’s what the players wanted and that’s what they got.
And ultimately honour is always satisfied when all parties can take the moral high ground. Mourinho would always claim he said no to a return to Real Madrid while they would insist they never wanted him back anyway.
But it’s never that simple, certainly not at Real Madrid, anyway. In exchange for the appointment of Zidane, Perez told the team leaders that they had to bring the dressing room to heel, restore discipline to the ranks. The propensity of Ramos and Ronaldo to make frequent trips to Sevilla and Morocco respectively should cease forthwith and focus should be solely on the coming season. They agreed and in exchange they got their manager of choice.
Mou would probably disagree with the sequence of events although that is certainly my understanding of how things panned out.
He would probably go down the road propounded once again by Winston Churchill who proclaimed that, “ history will be kind to me for I intend to write it,” or, perhaps more accurately in his case, get a friendly journalist to write it for him.