How can you be a master tactician without Plan B?

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

There’s something intensely human and tragic about watching a proud man proven wrong. As his confidence crumbles, his mind falters and the veil of charisma that once so entranced starts to thin, becomes transparent and finally disappears.

Despite all the silverware he’s placed in Chelsea’s trophy cabinet, my feelings towards Jose Mourinho have always been mixed, because life isn’t about winning.

It’s about how you win and how you deal with defeat.

At the core of Mourinho’s dilemma lurks a bizarre paradox. Regardless of whether you despise the man and his methods or not, there’s no denying that during the period of a game of football, he’s a tactical genius.

Yet now it appears that he had no Plan B.

The manager who prepares his teams for each game like no other, who makes brave and incredibly effective substitutions that turn matches around has no other way of doing things than the one he’s already employed in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain.

Most managers are happy to have leaders on the pitch, or leaders in the dressing room, but not Mourinho. He doesn’t want leaders: he wants disciples. Mourinho needs his players to believe in him and the power of what he calls The Group. There’s a distinctly military whiff to this style, and indeed sometimes he stands on the touchline, his left hand pressed onto the right side of his chest, looking half Napoleon and half Dr. Strangelove.

When everything is good it’s because the Group made it so. Everything bad that happens is down to all other bodies: physical, corporate and official.

His teams are set out in a similar style to many others. In front of five or six defenders a couple of flair players run between the lines, supplying a target striker. Nothing particularly remarkable, until you watch it working well. Then you realise that every single player out there knows exactly what they are meant to be doing and why. More, when an effective Mourinho team loses the ball, they swarm like ants over the opposition in possession until they have the ball in their control again.

For this to succeed every member of The Group must fit into Mourinho’s template. It matters not if you’ve the prodigious talent of Kevin de Bruyne (now starring for Manchester City after becoming a superstar in Germany) or the energetic pace, cut and thrust of André Schürrle. If you don’t defend well enough, you’re sold.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.