The Ultimate Soccer Thread 2012-2013 Vol. 3 Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga etc

Still dont know why Mourinho started that back line in the first leg :{ . How many times did that back 4 start together?
 
Wonder who Real are going after this summer. Ronaldo hasn't had good chemistry with a striker since Wayne Rooney, Real needs a legitimate striker to help him out, his prime isn't going to last much longer. Get rid of Higuian, he doesn't belong. Major moves need to happen or Ronaldo is just wasting his time, they rely on him way too much. A good Center-Back is needed also, especially if Pepe is on the way out.

Got a feeling Barca and Real are going to make it rain this summer, more so Real.

Still tho, Mourinho can't go out like this, Chelsea can and would wait.
 
Real def. need a better striker.  Aguero would be ideal. I'm content w/ our center backs.  Varane is showing a lot of promise.  Him and Ramos together will be solid.  Midfield we are stacked.  Left back I can deal w/ Marcelo and Coentrao (if he stays).  My main concern is right back.  We need a solid right back.  Arbeloa does nothing.  His defense is subpar and is awful when pushing forward in attack. 
 
Can't believe RM didn't score in the opening 20...so many chances.

Congrats to Dortmund. Pulling for them to get one before the squad gets ripped apart.

Mou's postgame interview gives me hope...
 
I could def see Aguero at Real..


Anyone have the post game interviews? Want to see what Mourinho and Subotic have to say lol
 


Mo has had enough of the ungrateful spanish media/fans/execs.


Come home to where you are appreciated Jose. ;)
 
Just watched the game. Notes, higuain still sucks. Gotze smh! He won't start in the finals. Drop özil and pick up david silva. Jose done with Madrid. Lew had a chance to put in the dagger. All and all. It will be a good finals, wouldn't be surprised if dortmond wins it all but it's bayerns year
 
Usmanov Says Arsenal’s Kroenke Shows No Wish to Create Winner
By Yuliya Fedorinova
April 30, 2013 11:05 AM EDT
Click 'Queue' to read later
Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov will consider his strategy for the soccer club by the end of the season, saying majority owner Stan Kroenke “doesn’t show any wish” to create a winning team.
“The team has no superstars now,” Usmanov, Russia’s richest man, said in interview in Moscow. Should the team finish fourth in England’s Premier League this season, Kroenke “would probably be happy.”
Kroenke, an American who also owns the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams, took control of the north London club in 2011 after acquiring stakes owned by two former board members.
Usmanov and his partner Farhad Moshiri, who together control 30 percent of the club, said they want to boost their stake and criticized the team’s board for its financial decisions after captain Robin van Persie didn’t extend his contract. The Dutch forward moved to Manchester United, where he is the league’s leading scorer and helped the team win the title this season.
Arsenal declined to comment on Usmanov’s statements about Kroenke’s ownership, referring to an October statement from Chief Executive Officer Ivan Gazidis that Kroenke and other board members had a “shared ambition” to win trophies. The Gunners haven’t won a trophy since the 2005 F.A. Cup.
Arsenal, a 13-time English soccer champion, is in the fourth place in Premiere League standings, a place behind billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea.
Usmanov said he “will think what to do with Arsenal” by the end of the season. “In our understanding, Kroenke has no plans to sell his stake, but we also won’t sell out, as we are the team’s fans,” Usmanov said.
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Pirlo :hat

As Goetze heads to Bayern, Pirlo describes Guardiola's allure
Posted by James Horncastle
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When it emerged a week ago that Mario Goetze has decided to leave Borussia Dortmund for Bayern Munich this summer, we were offered a reminder of the allure of the Allianz Arena now that there's the promise to play under Pep Guardiola next season.

The pull of Pep is powerful -- so powerful that you get the impression his tiki-taka can lead almost any player into temptation, even those who play for a coach as charismatic as Juergen Klopp.

"Goetze was the player Guardiola wanted to sign," Klopp explained before the first leg of Dortmund's Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid. "So if it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I cannot make myself 15 cm shorter and learn Spanish. Goetze wants to work with that extraordinary coach that is Guardiola."

Imagine for a moment just how flattering it must be to receive his call and how difficult it is then not to answer it. Andrea Pirlo knows what Goetze went through. Writing collaboratively with Alessandro Alciato in his biography Penso quindi gioco -- I think therefore I play -- which has been serialised in La Gazzetta dello Sport and Il Corriere dello Sport and was released in Italy today, one of the revelations the Juventus and Italy international playmaker makes is of an attempt Guardiola made to sign him.



New Press/Getty Images
While at AC Milan, Andrea Pirlo, left, and Alessandro Nesta would challenge each other using the same Barca team -- and coach -- during their numerous PlayStation sessions.
The starting point for this story curiously enough is Pirlo's passion for a particular video game console.

"After the wheel, the best invention is the PlayStation," he claims.

To say Pirlo picks up a controller every now and again is an understatement. Though he can't precisely recall how many football games he has played on it, he estimates that it's "at least four times" more than in real life.

Many of them came against his good friend Alessandro Nesta during the nine years they spent together at Milan. One wonders now given one is at Juventus and the other with the Montreal Impact whether they still play each other online.

"Me against Nesta was a clasico of our time at Milanello," Pirlo remembers. "We'd get in early, have breakfast at 9 then close ourselves off in our room to challenge each other, train, have lunch and then it was back in our room again until 4 in the afternoon.

"Our battles were pure adrenaline. I chose Barcelona, Sandrino did too. Barca against Barca. The first player I'd take was Samuel Eto'o, the fastest out of everyone, though I often lost. I'd become furious, I'd throw the joystick, demand a rematch and lose again, but I couldn't use the excuse that the coach of his team was better than mine: Pep Guardiola for him and Pep Guardiola for me. At least on the bench we started equal."

Amid a flurry of button-pushing one day, Pirlo claims that he and Nesta once jokingly considered kidnapping Guardiola when Milan played Barcelona in the annual Gamper Trophy at the Camp Nou on Aug. 25, 2010. However, they abandoned their plan because they thought they'd fall out over who got to keep him and that they'd probably have had to saw Guardiola in half.

"He would have suffered, the poor guy," Pirlo laughs. "And anyway the idea of abducting a person came to him first rather than to us, in the sense that Guardiola was to kidnap me that same night."

Barcelona and Milan had played out a 1-1 draw. An exquisite volley by a stretching Pippo Inzaghi had taken the game to penalties, which his side would lose as goalkeeper Jose Manuel Pinto saved three of their four spot kicks.

At the end, all the talk was about Zlatan Ibrahimovic and his future at Barcelona. There was a media frenzy. Some Milan players had also sought him out to persuade the Swede to move to San Siro, which of course he would in a few days' time.

Pirlo, meanwhile, had disappeared.

"Profiting from the manhunt underway and the fact that the attention on him had relaxed for a moment in all that chaos, [Guardiola] invited me to his office."

A "007 in flip-flops" was waiting for Pirlo as he left the dressing room at the Camp Nou. It was Pep's assistant Manuel Estiarte who "in his previous sporting life had been the greatest water polo player of all time, the second man in practice to walk on water.

"'Andrea, come with me,' [Estiarte said], The mister wants to meet you'.

"Without a [water polo cap] on his head," Pirlo japes, "I found it hard to recognise him. Anyway, I looked at him and could smell the scent of chlorine. 'Ok, vamos.'"

They entered Pep's office. There was red wine on the table, a good start for Pirlo who, when he's not playing PlayStation or football, runs his own vineyard, which produces 15-20,000 bottles a year. Guardiola thanked him for agreeing to see him in perfect Italian. The pair had nearly played together at Brescia. Pirlo had been recalled on loan by Inter so they could sell him to Milan just as Pep had joined from Barcelona in the summer of 2001.

"After a couple of minutes, he'd already got to the point," Pirlo recalls. "As a footballer he had imposed the play. As a coach he had learned to attack. 'We're very strong,' [Guardiola said], 'I couldn't ask for better, but you would be the cherry [on top]. We're looking for a midfielder to alternate with Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets, and that midfielder is you.'"

The meeting lasted for about a half-hour. Guardiola did nearly all of the talking. He revealed Barcelona had already spoken to Milan about the prospect of taking him and that they'd said 'no', but he would try again. For the most part Pirlo sat in stunned silence, nodding occasionally. Many things crossed his mind, but one stood out. "I immediately thought about Sandrino. He would die with envy when I told him about it.

"Like Real Madrid, more than Real Madrid, I would have gone walking on all fours to Barcelona," Pirlo admits. "At that moment they were the best team in the world, must I add anything else?"



David Ramos/Getty Images
The media focused on Zlatan Ibrahimovich's impending move to Barcelona as Pep Guardiola, above, discreetly met with Andrea Pirlo.
He describes their play as "a kind of Rolex with the battery of a Swatch" for its refinement and how they keep going.

As the time for Pirlo to go approached, Guardiola told him that they'd be in touch. He wished him a safe trip back to Milan and hoped it wouldn't be for long. "I left his office dazed," Pirlo reflects.

Almost the last player to get on the bus, he spent the journey to the airport with his nose up against the window while his teammates and those outside chattered about Ibra.

"We were travelling in opposite directions. The world knew about him, [but] about me, no."

Negotiations went on for a little while longer, Pirlo says, but Milan weren't prepared to let him go, at least not then, as they would a year later after Massimiliano Allegri had made it clear that he'd have to adapt to a new position on the left of midfield if he wished to stay. Pirlo didn't and so he joined Juventus, becoming the conductor of an orchestra that took the Scudetto off Milan and is on the brink of winning back-to-back titles.

I guess the question to ask after reading that chapter of his biography is one historians love to pose, and that's 'what if'?

In a parallel universe, had Guardiola gotten his wish, then Pirlo might have been playing for Barcelona, albeit under Tito Vilanova, in Wednesday night's Champions League semifinal second leg. He might, although it seems unlikely even if Pep were still to retain an interest and Juventus were prepared to sell [which one safely assumes, they're not], play for Bayern in the future, a highly doubtful scenario, admittedly, given his age, how much he likes Turin and the small matter that they have Bastian Schweinsteiger and happened to spend ¬40m on Javi Martinez last summer.

In football history, it's yet another illustrious case of sliding doors. Pep managed to get Goetze, it's true, but when he reflects on his coaching career, one assumes that he'll remember Pirlo, at least according to the story in the playmaker's biography, as the one that got away.
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A midfield of Xavi, Iniesta, and Pirlo would have been :x :x :x
 
Fear The Ibis said:


Mo has had enough of the ungrateful spanish media/fans/execs.


Come home to where you are appreciated Jose. ;)
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LOL @ that video.
Mou looked like he had it all to say - probably rehearsed how he was going to spin it to play games with the English media well in advance. Interviewer cut out the bull and got straight to the point :lol

But seriously, what in the world should anyone be grateful to him for? His antics? His utterly unimaginative brand of reactive football?

Special one has had a tactically awful CL. Though he made it to the semis, he was basically outwitted at every stage of the comp this season - three times alone by Klopp. To be fair, they played better yesterday without the double pivot which had made it easy for Dortmund to focus on Alonso, but that was only after he lost it in the first leg by partnering Pepe and Varane. And really, Klopp wasn't doing anything revolutionary- press Alonso because he is their key player, don't leave space in behind for a counter, and attack down the flanks - especially the space behind CR because everyone knows he isn't tracking back.


Hopefully, Barca give a good account of themselves today. Though a German final is all but certain, I'd like to see them play well and make Bayern work for it - though injuries are just piling up now.
 
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:lol @ people saying Jose is a basically a bum now (same thing with Ozil)... I'd take both any day. Love the perspective people have on message boards & the media specifically. 3 semi final CL appearances in the last 3 years is still impressive especially with a semi flawed team. I get the criticism of Higuain & it looks like "the internets" is saying Klopp & Lewandowski may be coming to RM if Jose leaves. That would be something especially if CR7 stays.

With regards to the Blaugranas, I hope they put up a fight today. That aggregate is almost impossible to overcome (against a team like Bayern) even at Camp Nou but the director of coaching for my son's travel team says this Barca side have been champions several times over & Bayern have a history of choking in critical games over the last 5-6 years so precedent is there (however unlikely).

I just hope they put up a good fight. I think Francesc Tomas of ESPN FC put it best in his post today on the site because it's exactly how I feel -


One thing is clear though: Whatever happens, I will continue to support my players, my team, my colours once the tie is over.

May the best team win.
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s f
Reggie Kush said:
Drop özil and pick up david silva.
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Can't be serious. :|

Hate Madrid didn't capitalize on any of those early chances. I loved the team's effort though, fighting until the whistle blew. Showed a lot of heart.

Hate having to wait a whole year for another shot at the CL title. Copa Del Rey is now the focus.

Gonna be an interesting off-season.
 
psk2310 said:
:lol @ people saying Jose is a basically a bum now (same thing with Ozil)... I'd take both any day. Love the perspective people have on message boards & the media specifically. 3 semi final CL appearances in the last 3 years is still impressive especially with a semi flawed team. I get the criticism of Higuain & it looks like "the internets" is saying Klopp & Lewandowski may be coming to RM if Jose leaves. That would be something especially if CR7 stays.
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If it's a flawed side, then it's his fault it's flawed. For a manager, he's basically had unprecedented power at the club, especially since Valdano was sacked. And that power applies to transfer dealings. Anyway, the real flaw of the team is that they tend to run out of ideas when forced to play possession, and the opposition leaves no space to counter, e.g. against United and Dortmund.

Considering his less than stellar CL campaign, he deserves criticism, especially now that he's on his way out having won one major title over three seasons with the most expensive side ever assembled. And I think he's a lot of things, but I don't think he's a bum.

Ancelotti seems to be the most strongly linked candidate for RM.
 
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I agree whatever criticism of Jose over his side's recent CL performance but he's still an elite manager.

Do you think he really had complete say in building his side? I'm not so sure.

If he did have as much power as some suggest, why would he leave especially for Chelsea that has an owner like Abramovich? Why leave a team that has the resources like RM & talent already there that just needs to be tweaked?

I would much rather have Jose over Ancelotti. Shoot Ancelotti is having trouble winning the Ligue 1 which should be a lot easier then their recent performance given the talent on that side compared to what's on other sides within Ligue 1 but I digress.

BTW abovelegit1, when I made that statement, I wasn't singling you out. You've been consistently intelligent in your posts which I respect.


That Pep story Fear The Ibis & I posted is incredible. I can't wait to see what he does with Bayern next year & for the next several years to come. I can't imagine a midfield of Xavi, Don Iniesta, & Pirlo.

Watching Juve over the last several months & his appearance with his Italian national side as made me really appreciate Pirlo. I can't believe he's still playing at a great level given he's 33 or so.
 
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abovelegit1 said:
psk2310 said:
:lol @ people saying Jose is a basically a bum now (same thing with Ozil)... I'd take both any day. Love the perspective people have on message boards & the media specifically. 3 semi final CL appearances in the last 3 years is still impressive especially with a semi flawed team. I get the criticism of Higuain & it looks like "the internets" is saying Klopp & Lewandowski may be coming to RM if Jose leaves. That would be something especially if CR7 stays.
Click to expand...

If it's a flawed side, then it's his fault it's flawed. For a manager, he's basically had unprecedented power at the club, especially since Valdano was sacked. And that power applies to transfer dealings. Anyway, the real flaw of the team is that they tend to run out of ideas when forced to play possession, and the opposition leaves no space to counter, e.g. against United and Dortmund.

Considering his less than stellar CL campaign, he deserves criticism, especially now that he's on his way out having won one major title over three seasons with the most expensive side ever assembled. And I think he's a lot of things, but I don't think he's a bum.

Ancelotti seems to be the most strongly linked candidate for RM.
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To be fair, Injuries decimated RM in the CL. Especially with their back four.

RM's problem wasn't a lack of goals, it was the defense that gave up 4 to Dortmund in the first leg.

Mourinho's hallmark as a coach has always been the strength of his defenses, not attacking. So when he loses 3 of his top defenders it was always going to be difficult for them to advance.
 
psk2310 said:
I agree whatever criticism of Jose over his side's recent CL performance but he's still an elite manager.

Do you think he really had complete say in building his side? I'm not so sure.

If he did have as much power as some suggest, why would he leave especially for Chelsea that has an owner like Abramovich? Why leave a team that has the resources like RM & talent already there that just needs to be tweaked?
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Because Roman bought pretty much whoever Jose wanted when he was at Chelsea
 
abovelegit1 said:
If it's a flawed side, then it's his fault it's flawed. For a manager, he's basically had unprecedented power at the club, especially since Valdano was sacked. And that power applies to transfer dealings. Anyway, the real flaw of the team is that they tend to run out of ideas when forced to play possession, and the opposition leaves no space to counter, e.g. against United and Dortmund.

Considering his less than stellar CL campaign, he deserves criticism, especially now that he's on his way out having won one major title over three seasons with the most expensive side ever assembled. And I think he's a lot of things, but I don't think he's a bum.

Ancelotti seems to be the most strongly linked candidate for RM.
Click to expand...

Jose has never had full power , no manager ever does at Real Madrid, it's Real Madrid. Those presidents and board of directors walk on roses everywhere they go. :lol

He deserves criticism for last week's performance, but he said he made sure Real CB's studied Lewandowski thru and thru, Pepe just did a horrible job of marking him. They got out played, at some point I don't know how you blame Jose from the score going 1-1 to 4-1 in 13 mins. That's on the players man.

Real's best team was last year, they had the greatest chemistry. They won La Liga and were penalty shots away from making the Champions League Final. They still in my eyes, over-achieved, the whole year. But there best side was last year.

Yea Real has one of the most expensive squads in the world (mostly due to Ronaldo and Kaka costing them like 180 million dollars in 2009) but they've never been as good on paper or on the pitch as they should have been. It's been that way for the past 10 years. That's Real's problem, it's the Real culture. (Spend, Spend, Spend - Names, Names, Names). That's never been Mourinho's personality, thats never been his approach to football. Mourinho and Real are as different of personality's as you can get.

As for Mourinho's time in Real Madrid. He took the job in the middle of Barcelona's historical run. One of the greatest sides in football history, he took the job. I didn't even think Madrid would have won La Liga once, when he first signed. Then again, I thought Mourinho shouldn't have gone to Madrid in the first place, especially during a time where Barcelona were making history. - But he did, he took on a challenge. Thats what he's always done.

Ancelotti's going to come to Real for what? To be sacked within the first couple years? That's what Real is going to do. Might as well hire Zidane, at least he's still young.

I still don't think Mourinho wants to leave tho, he may just finish out his contract at the end of next year. But that all depends on him and Real's presidents final meeting. Like I said before, Chelsea and England can wait, they'll love him forever and give him full control.
 
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Here's a timely story from ESPN FC on Jose given our conversation just now (spoiler mode below). I don't agree with some of the writer's points but it was a good read.

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/espnfcunited/id/5412?cc=5901

I forgot about Jose poking Tito in the eye... :{ :lol







May 01 @ 10:14AM EDT
Posted by Gabriele Marcotti
Jose Mourinho's tenure at Real Madrid has, overall, been a failure

Jose Mourinho's time at Real Madrid hasn't come to an end. He has five Liga matches to go, plus the Copa del Rey final this season. And, while right now it looks about as likely as Roman Abramovich mooring his yacht in the Grand Canyon, there is still a chance -- however tiny -- that the four year contract he signed on May 22 of last year will be honored.

But let's put that to one side right now. Real Madrid's comeback attempt against Borussia Dortmund fell short on Tuesday night and the club's hunt for La Decima will need to be postponed. It's a natural point in time to take stock of Mourinho's three seasons at the Bernabeu.

If your main metric in judging success is results, the ultimate judgment has to be negative.

Three straight Champions League semifinals represents the club's best run of performances in the game's premier club competition since 2000-2003, when they twice reached the semis and once won it all.

Barring a sudden domestic collapse in La Liga by Barcelona (or one by Real Madrid themselves, which would see them slip to third) he'll finish second for the second time in three seasons. Sandwiched between those two runner-up places was his Liga masterpiece: the 2011-12 campaign, when Real set a whole gaggle of records, from points gained to games won to goals scored to highest goal difference.

Mourinho won one Copa del Rey, was knocked out of another in the quarterfinals and the third, well, we'll know in two and a half weeks.

Then again, raw results only tell you so much.

On his way to those semifinals, his Real Madrid side eliminated Lyon, Tottenham Hotspur, CSKA Moscow, APOEL Nicosia, Manchester United and Galatasaray. United apart (and that was in a game marked by controversy), it's hardly the cream of the European crop. When faced with quality semifinal opponents -- Barcelona, Bayern and now Borussia Dortmund -- his team fell. It was close -- very close last year -- but they still fell.

Even the Liga achievements can be read several ways. In his first year, Real Madrid won 92 points, which was actually four fewer than the guy he replaced, Manuel Pellegrini, who, it must be said, had to make do without Cristiano Ronaldo for nearly two months of the season. And this year they're on pace to finish with 85 points, which is 13 fewer than Barcelona's projected total.

For an average manager, those aren't horrible results. But Mourinho isn't Joe Tracksuit-and-clipboard (or, these days, sponsored fleece-and-iPad). He is the highest paid coach in a major European league.
Real Madrid paid more than $16 million in compensation just to free him from his Inter Milan contract. They expected him to be a difference-maker.

And he hasn't been.

You can't argue that he hasn't had the tools. Since 2009 (a year before his arrival, but that's when the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Xabi Alonso came aboard) Real Madrid spent some $578 million on transfer fees. Compare it to Europe's other big spenders. Manchester City clocks in at $639.2 million, the others are all behind: Chelsea ($492 million), Barcelona ($366 million) and Manchester United ($250 million).

Maybe you think net spend is a more accurate gauge. City are, again, tops with $445 million, followed by Real Madrid ($395 million), Chelsea ($390 million), Barcelona ($201 million) and United ($47.8 million). Note also that, once Jorge Valdano , then general manager, was forced out in the summer of 2011, Mourinho had virtually complete control of the club and their transfers.

Sure, he was up against Barcelona, one of the finest teams in history. And, yes, if Bayern and Real Madrid traded places and he got to play in the Bundesliga the past three seasons maybe he would have won more. But that doesn't change the fact that the club invested all this money -- both in him and in resources -- precisely because they thought he could bring his results.

If you're going to judge him on somewhat more subjective parameters --Did his team play well? Did he add to the Real Madrid brand? -- the verdict isn't going to be much better.

Mourinho is not some kind of esoteric master tactician. That's not a criticism. Some great managers are, some equally great ones are not.

There are two sides to tactics: having ideas and getting your guys to execute them well. He has never been a revolutionary when it comes to tactics, which is fine, as long as you get your team to perform whatever gameplan you lay out. The problem is that for most of his tenure Real Madrid never really went beyond being fundamentally a counterattacking team that reacted to what the opposition did, rather than one capable of imposing itself on a game.

When Real went behind, coming back into the game often became a real struggle. You often felt the front four were isolated from the back six (Luka Modric was signed, in part, to solve this problem, but Mourinho evidently did not buy into the notion or figured he wasn't ready to sacrifice Sami Khedira or Xabi Alonso or go 4-3-3). Apart from certain spells over the three year tenure- - like spring of last year -- he failed to give the team a coherent way of playing when in possession, one that went beyond the counterattack or leaving it to the individuals. Again, the bulk of Mourinho's starters have been in place since he arrived. If, after nearly three years, your players still look disjointed when you have the ball, you've come up short as a coach.

Whether he added to the Real Madrid brand sounds like one of those horrible questions that marketing types might discuss. But it's relevant. Club president Florentino Perez's original Galacticos were all predicated upon playing a certain way, acting a certain way, being the global equivalent of -- his words, not mine -- the “Harlem Globetrotters”: better than everyone, yet loved by everyone.

Under Mourinho, things went from bad to worse very quickly. And he paid a price for a massive early miscalculation. He thought that ratcheting up the tension between Real and Barcelona would unify his team and yield results. He believed that the siege mentality would see him through, just as it had in the past.

Rarely has such a choice boomeranged so badly. The rant about UNICEF and UEFA after his first season got him nowhere. The ill-tempered Spanish SuperCup in his second year -- the one where he decided to go and poke Tito Vilanova in the eye and then walk away as if nothing had happened -- made him appear unhinged. (Quick detour: Luis Suarez got a 10 game ban for biting an opponent. Mourinho got nothing for the poke.) Ultimately, far from coalescing the squad into a unit, it precipitated a split in his team, with several of his own influential veterans openly
wondering: why it wasn't it enough to merely try to beat Barcelona, why did they have to hate them as well?

The siege mentality works when you can think of yourself as a victim or an underdog. It's a staple for coaches everywhere, right down to Little League. “Gentlemen, it's us against the world ... how bad do you want it?” That approach may have worked at Inter, where the club saw themselves as outsiders to the Milan-Juventus hegemony, and at Chelsea, where they were the nouveau riche upstarts upsetting the social order. But this was Spain, and Real Madrid -- more than any other club -- represent the Establishment. Trying to recast Real as some kind of persecuted underdog simply didn't play. Many Real fans saw it as humiliating. Supporters of other clubs, particularly those who did have legitimate gripes, saw it as a joke.

(It's not a coincidence that Mourinho enjoys his strongest support among Real's “Ultras Sur”. They're a subset of the fan base who legitimately do consider themselves outsiders battling “the system”. Mourinho naturally resonates with them.)

Mourinho realized this during his second season, which is why his behavior changed. Less aggression, less picking fights, less moaning. But by that point, the horse had bolted. The damage had been done.

Too often we think of managers as fixed in time. Sir Alex is like THIS. Pep Guardiola is like THAT. The fact is they're human too and they grow and evolve over time. They make mistakes, they learn from them, they realize what worked before might no longer work and they change.

Mourinho is no different. The fact that he wasn't able to impose a coherent tactical identity and playing style to Real Madrid doesn't mean he can't do it. He did it at Inter Milan in his second season. He did at Chelsea in his first two campaigns, before he became over-reliant on Didier Drogba. And his Porto teams -- especially his 2002-03 side -- were a joy to watch, flexibly switching between 4-3-3 and 4-4-2, with a tactical sophistication and an ability to create some of his more recent sides lacked.

He may not admit it, he may wheel out the long list of excuses to explain what, ultimately, was a failed three seasons at Real Madrid.

And if he doesn't do it, no doubt some of his acolytes will: the media hated him, Valdano's supporters hated him, Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos disrupted the team, everyone favored Barcelona, he didn't have enough control, he got stuck with Kaka whom he had no use for, UNICEF, UEFA, the Scandinavian referees' syndicate, etc.

But deep down, having had the opportunity to spend a bit of time with him a few years ago, I'm pretty sure he'll be examining exactly what went wrong. Great managers are often their own harshest critics, at least in private. If he can learn from his experience, if he can rediscover the tactical acumen he showed in years past as well as the ability to get the players to buy into it, he'll be back stronger than before.
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Gus Johnson is doing the game 
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Good article. I was saying the same thing, Jose and the Real Madrid culture just don't mix.

I don't agree with the notion that Real Madrid needed to be gentlemen and just "beat" Barcelona. Real needed that underdog and emotional discovery to get thru Barcelona. Jose Mourinho literally was brought in to beat Barcelona, end there historical run, that was the goal. Not to mention Barcelona players have always played with that "hate" against Real Madrid, its fueled them as well. I have no problem with that. I think Jose did a good job there.

As for establishing an identity, I'll agree with that. Real's identity in the past couple years with Mourinho was to counter-attack opponents, beat them that way. That's the way to beat Barcelona, but it wasn't the way the way to win multiple Ligas and Euros.

But like I said - the best season they had in 10 years, was last year. They were a penalty shot away from the final (most likely winning to). They managed to win a league title during a time where Barcelona may have been the greatest football team of all time. Made it to 3 straight semi-finals in the euros. It's not like its been complete hell. I hope Mourinho stays, Barca has taken a step back. He could get back to winning not just focusing on beating Barcelona.

Real need a player or two more than they need a new manager.
 
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