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Premier League Diary - Jose Mourinho has Antonio Conte’s number

Jose Mourinho looked at the time. 10am. He was two hours late for work, and was panicking. He ran around the house, naked, trying to get ready as quickly as possible. He stubbed his toe on a chair, and screamed something that is unprintable, even in Portuguese. He grabbed two socks off the radiator, drying from last night. In his haste, he dug his toe in into a loose-threaded heel and went straight through. More swearing. He caught himself in the mirror, a naked, middle-aged man with one sock on, and one ripped sock wrapped halfway up his calf. He was in two minds. He could calm down, accept that he’d be a bit late today and proceed at a normal pace, or he could bellow at the injustice that had befallen him. He grabbed a cushion and screamed into it, with the last remaining effs and cees that were left to him in his native language.

Finally dressed, he grabbed a coffee from his machine as he swept towards the front door, and the force with which he picked up the cup made a bit of scalding liquid flick over the side of the cup lip and onto his wrist. The shock of the heat made him drop the cup, the china shattering on the floor and the coffee staining his trouser leg, and making him switch to Spanish for some more choice invective, that also mainly meant eff and cee.

Finally dressed again, he half-sprinted out the front door, heavily catching his right shoulder against the door frame, and as his eyes watered with real, serious pain, he turned the key in the car and heard a half-splutter. The car was borked. He went outside, aimed a kick at the the car door, and let two tears run down his face.

His wife lent him the keys to her car, and despite the hassle of the morning, he was only three hours late. Not only that, but none of the players at training were stupid enough to start questioning Mourinho about where, exactly, he had been. Even Ed Woodward, who’d come for a meeting earlier to discuss January transfer targets, was too scared of Mourinho to start bringing up some questionable timekeeping. There had been no serious reason to worry. These things happen, and the only important thing was to make sure they didn’t keep coming.

Mourinho went to get changed into his training kit, ready for some light work with those who played against Chelsea, something more challenging for those who weren’t involved at all, and sent Wayne Rooney straight home with a scowl. He couldn’t work out why everyone was laughing at him, until it was clear that he’d been in a rush when changing and put on some tracksuit bottoms which were for the under-15 side, exposing most of his legs, and showing the huge burn mark from earlier in the morning. Mourinho worried. He was fine with having a joke with his players, but he thought becoming a figure of fun was seriously dangerous. He needed control and unquestioned authority, and things were falling apart.

Rooney had been excised from the squad, and wasn’t even considered for the game at Stamford Bridge. He wasn’t sure when he’d be back next, but he was aware of his links to the most important journalists in the country. Separately, he’d started to think that there was a mole leaking his team sheets, and started to worry how he might seriously plan for games.

As well as that, he hadn’t got Zlatan Ibrahimovic into form, nor had he managed to accommodate Paul Pogba’s late arrival and non-existent pre-season training, and get one of the best players in the league to get up to speed.

It didn’t end there. Luke Shaw had been dropped but scarcely shown why he should be missed, that is until Daley Blind failed to look at the ball in the first minute and start in front of it. Chris Smalling was becoming even more useless than he had looked under Louis van Gaal and David Moyes. Even David de Gea had thrown some clangers. Anthony Martial was clearly suffering from some kind of ennui, and he’d not fixed his confidence. The squad was better than the one he’d inherited, but this wasn’t the Mourinho of old. He needed time to work with what he knew, and didn’t yet have the old, superior sparkle.

He decided to take part in the defensive drills to show the players just what he needed from the back four. He’d done it before at Chelsea. He wasn’t the greatest player, but with his knowledge, he could show them the positioning and aggression he wanted. It was a disaster. His first tackle missed the ball completely and while his boot barely touched Phil Jones, he was confident he’d be out for another six months. He tried to show Chris Smalling the angles for clearances needed, but he slipped and fell on his coccyx, and wheezed like an old man with the force of the winding. He felt his control slipping away, almost palpably. By the time he’d finished, he knew that everything he’d said and done had only added to the confusion of his players. They were rubbish players, yes, and he’d get there eventually when he had decent ones instead, but he was furious.

Furious, because he’d had enough of this. The persecution. The trips, tricks and traps. All to get at him. It had been UNICEF once, and Barcelona, club doctors and referees. But now, he knew who was behind all this. The leaks, the obstacles and the challenges. He took out his phone and emailed Antonio Conte: I’m onto you.