The Premier League, we should never forget, is essentially the most popular soap opera in the world. Yes there’s the football, the winning and losing of matches, and that is important, but alongside it runs the constant drama, the ludicrous plots, the intrigue, the operatic farce. It is the bend of the two that has made football a global obsession. All the best soap operas require a great villain and the greatest, the Dirty Den, the Paul Robinson, the JR Ewing of football is José Mourinho.
Mourinho is 60 now, his hair white, his eyes perched above swales of shadow. The old shtick has worn a little thin. The power to predict the course of matches has deserted him. The game has moved on and so have players: he cannot, as he used to, kindle in his squads the outraged fire of the wronged avenger. He once mocked Rafa Benítez for winning the Europa League; now he celebrates winning the Conference League and was angered enough by not winning the Europa League last season that he waited for the referee Anthony Taylor in the car park after the final.
Mourinho is diminished and yet there remains something irresistible about him. Within hours of his sacking by Roma on Tuesday, stories were appearing insisting that Newcastle have absolutely no intention of appointing him. (To be clear, that is Newcastle responding to queries rather than making a proactive statement, but still, it was revealing just how many journalists and social media commenters alike made the link.) Why would a club backed by the vast wealth of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, looking up hopefully from the foothills of greatness, appoint a coach who has not been at the pinnacle of his profession for a decade? And yet, and yet …
Most fans may still back Eddie Howe despite poor form. The sporting director, Dan Ashworth, may favour somebody closer to the tactical vanguard rather than a coach whose glories lie in the age of attrition that preceded the guardiolista revolution.
But who actually makes the decisions? Because Newcastle have not had to make a managerial change since Howe replaced Steve Bruce after his inevitable dismissal in October 2021 nobody knows exactly who is making these calls. Mourinho’s aura was enough to seduce even a chairman as experienced as Tottenham’s Daniel Levy in 2019; would it be so surprising if he caught the eye of Yasir al-Rumayyan or some other Saudi executive, particularly given his position as a board member at the Mahd Sports Academy in Jeddah, alongside the influential Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud and the assistant sports minister?
Besides, there is something about Mourinho to Newcastle that feels right and not just because, three years ago, he described himself as “a little Magpie” having heard tales of the club and the passion of its fans at the knee of Bobby Robson. Mourinho’s greatest successes at Porto, Chelsea and Internazionale have come with clubs that could portray themselves as rebel outsiders, battling the establishment. That is exactly how Newcastle’s chief executive, Darren Eales, portrayed the club – poor benighted Newcastle, cursed with the richest owners in the world – as he explained last week how constrained the club is by profit and sustainability rules.
Since the PIF takeover Newcastle seem to have embraced the dark side; the paranoid fervour of some of their more vocal fans, those who see every concern about human rights abuses, or states buying titles, as motivated by club loyalties or a global conspiracy to repress the geordie people, would seem fertile ground for the classic Mourinho pouting and whining. The coincidence of Mourinho losing his job just as Newcastle have lost six of their last seven league matches is almost too perfect.
But failing Newcastle – and it should be stressed that the club are adamant Howe’s job is not at risk – where does Mourinho go next? He has made little secret of the fact that he sees himself managing Portugal at some point, but that job is not going to be available before the Euros at the earliest: Roberto Martínez’s 10 games in charge have brought 10 wins and an aggregate goal difference of 36-2.
What clubs would take him? A third stint at Chelsea, just to confirm their status under Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali as the greatest example yet of football club as banter project? A climactic bonfire of the vanities at Paris Saint-Germain? A triumphant return to Barcelona, Joan Laporta making the appointment he didn’t make in 2008 when he opted instead for Pep Guardiola, to salt the turf that brought the world 15 years of hegemonic juego de posición?
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The problem is, there’s almost no option that doesn’t sound instantly hilarious, the sort of thing you want to see but would hate to happen at your own club. Roma was a little different from other recent jobs given how popular Mourinho remained with fans to the last, how relatively limited the toxicity, but it still conformed to the familiar pattern: the fillip of his arrival and an immediate uplift perhaps bringing early success, then growing friction with the squad and/or directors as results deteriorate before the final meltdown.
With each job, the highs become a little lower. Scrapping for sixth place in Serie A and hailing it as a triumph given the lack of resources feels unbecoming for a manager who once strove with the gods.
So where next? Mourinho doesn’t need the money; a recent study ranked him as the wealthiest coach in the world with a net worth of almost £100m. Rather, he seems driven by resentments and the need to prove he was right to reject the Barcelona principles when the club turned him down in 2008, to turn his back on pressing and possession to adopt an approach of radical reactivity.
But to do that, to pull off one last grand triumph, he needs his stage. The clubs that may attract him, the clubs who can afford him, probably do not want him. Logic suggests a stint in the Saudi Pro League but the narrative of the Premier League’s grand soap opera demands the Little Magpie fly to St James’ to do one final job for Sir Bobby.
