The Special One: Jose Mourinho is a hard man to beat, but it is possible, as shown by Sporting Gijon
By Rory Smith
11:03PM BST 04 Apr 2011
Liverpool 1 Chelsea 0
May 3 2005
To Jose Mourinho, only the supernatural prevented him defending the Champions League trophy he had won the previous year, while at FC Porto, in his first season at Chelsea. The Luis Garcia strike which sent Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool to the final in Istanbul was, the Portuguese claimed, “a ghost goal”. To Liverpool’s players, beating a side who finished some 34 points ahead of them in the Premier League was far from miraculous.
“Most of that season, we played 4-4-2,” recalled Garcia, now with Greek side Panathinaikos. “But in that game Rafa played a 4-4-1-1, and my main task was to block off Claude Makelele. He gave Mourinho’s side great balance, getting the ball and starting attacks, and it was my job to stop him getting possession.
“Mourinho’s teams always counter-attack at incredible speed. If you attack them, they will hit you. With Chelsea, it was Makelele, on to Lampard, then to a striker, and they would have a goal-scoring chance. At Real Madrid, it is even quicker, as Xabi Alonso can control a game like Makelele but also has Lampard’s quality of passing.
“So we had to sit deep, stay very compact and attack when we could. The space is around the defensive pivot — Makelele or Alonso — as the other midfielders push on. It was very hard work, but winning was an incredible feeling.”
Atalanta 3 Inter Milan 1
Jan 18 2009
Sampdoria 1 Inter 0
Sept 26 2009
Embarrassed and angered, Jose Mourinho had clearly let his reserved, professorial conqueror get under his skin. “How can Luigi Delneri be my bestia nera [bogeyman], when he was sacked 15 days after trying to succeed me at Porto?” the Portuguese snapped after losing for the second time in nine months to the current Juventus manager.
Delneri, in truth, makes an unlikely sparring partner. “He is special,” admitted the 60-year-old. “He has won everything. I am a nobody in comparison.” And yet Delneri plagued Mourinho in his two years in Italy. In his first season, he saw his momentum checked by lowly Atalanta; then, after moving to Sampdoria, he repeated the trick.
How? “Get them to think about their defence,” said the Italian. His sides, he believes, are “quick, dynamic, explosive.” His successive victories were marked by a willingness to wait for Inter and strike at speed when their attacks broke down.
“There is no secret,” he said. “They will beat you if you do not play to your utmost. If you play to their rhythm, you lose. I beat him twice, but I do not like to talk of things like jinxes. That’s rubbish. There are no certain recipes for always beating one opponent or another.”
Barcelona 5 Real Madrid 0
Nov 29, 2010
Pep Guardiola’s side may have produced an attacking display so mesmeric that — as midfielder Xavi revealed later — his players applauded themselves for an entire minute in the Nou Camp dressing room after the game, but, as always with Barcelona, it was diligence that inspired the destruction.
Guardiola tasked Carles Puyol and Eric Abidal with doubling up to nullify the threat of Cristiano Ronaldo, Xavi played higher than normal so as to drag Mesut Ozil out of position, Lionel Messi roamed in between Xabi Alonso and Ricardo Carvalho, pulling both out of position. The intense pressing which defines Barca’s style, of course, served to interrupt Real’s rhythm.
Then, of course, there was the overwhelming familiarity in attack which enabled Xavi, Messi, Pedro, David Villa and Andres Iniesta to roam through Real’s teetering back line. “This is a victory that dates back 15 or 20 years,” said Guardiola after the game. “We owe it to everyone who has participated in bringing about this style of play over such a long time.” “It was not just the result that was a pleasure,” said Puyol. “It was the manner of the victory, the way we played. It was a complete performance.
Everything that we did worked out for the best.”
Real Madrid 0 Sorting Gijon 1
April 2, 2011
One hundred and 51 games after he last tasted defeat in a home league match, Mourinho’s nine-year-long unbeaten run came to an end just three days before Tottenham’s visit, as Miguel de las Cuevas gave lowly Gijón their first victory at the Bernabeu for 16 years.
“It was the goal of my career,” said the former Atletico Madrid player. He did, though, acknowledge that Sporting’s victory was a fortuitous one. “It is a slightly strange case because we only really had one chance and we took it,” he added. “The defenders and [Sporting goalkeeper] Juan Pablo all gave 10 out of 10 displays.” De Las Cuevas’s goal ensured Real’s third league defeat of the season, but this followed the pattern set by Jose Antonio Camacho’s win with Osasuna earlier this year rather than the 5-0 victory Guardiola’s team produced. Gijón sat back, disrupted Real’s passing rhythm, denied them the chance to launch counter attacks and then — having ridden their luck — scored.
“There was no special motivation,” said the manager, Manuel Preciado, who was involved in an unseemly spat with Mourinho earlier this season. “There is no acrimony in our football. We played like this against Barcelona and drew, against Villarreal and drew, and against Valencia and drew.”
No comments:
Post a Comment