Mourinho & benitez - Article by james lawton

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Postby inglis5 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:22 pm

I just read a brilliant article by James Lawton. It sums up everything that is wrong with Chelsea and Mourinho (and good about Liverpool and Rafa). I'd be interested to know what you think....

An open letter to Jose Mourinho from the Independent's Chief Sports Writer on the ugly truth behind Chelsea's ascent
Published: 20 December 2005
Dear Jose,

Not so long ago, when you were a figure of hope rather than darkness, you said you were a star in your own movie. We could all enjoy that; it implied fun and celebration of outstanding deeds. It even added a little to the gaiety of the football nation. But now we have a better idea of the kind of movie you had in mind.

From where you are sitting, in the penthouse of your mind, you may not have noticed that it is turning into a grotesque mix of Sweet Smell of Success and Citizen Kane.

You have blown it, Jose; not in terms of column inches or television exposure or advertising spin-offs or security at the heart of your oil-rouble empire, but in the regard of all those who long for new messiahs of the game, men like Busby and Stein who gloried in their teams and their achievements and didn't scramble in such unseemly fashion to be at the heart of the reflected glory.

To tell you the truth, Jose, your current performance would look bad enough on reality TV.

You have jettisoned style for some chintzy version of celebrity for its own sake. Some woolly-minded observers say that your antics provide a valuable service to the team, that it deflects attention from them, allows them to go about their relentless work. Well, here's a fact: I never saw a great football man, and this includes Ferguson and Wenger, who willingly tried to grab the attention from their players, not on occasion but as a matter of carefully calculated course.

You know why? Because they are football men to their bones and they know that their great glory will always be the performance of their players. That's why they are so excitable and natural on the touchline. Wenger can be a cold fish at times, God knows, and he has that reputation among rival managers, but he doesn't pose, he bares his hopes and his fears and he doesn't turn everything into his own glory - and if Ferguson was not ready to salute his team, and express his gratitude, why would he run along the touchline like some demented schoolboy in the tuck shop when United achieve something extraordinary?

The harsh view of your own self-absorbed act must be that it can only be explained by your own lack of a significant playing career.

You never knew the cheers from the terraces, and now it is presumably not enough for you to shape great achievement through your talent for coaching and plotting a set of winning tactics. Now you have to plunder the glory of your players while it is white-hot.

The last time I wrote to you it was, believe it or not, in a spirit of avuncular concern. I thought, like so many others weary of the back-biting and self-interest of Ferguson and Wenger, you were a star on the cusp of shining a brilliant light on English football and that all you needed to do was rein in the cockiness, not entirely but to a certain pleasing degree, and then march on to only the heavens knew where along the peaks of achievement.

It was in that phase when you were still capable of wit rather than appalling bombast, but a lot of people know better now. It has become apparent you don't know the difference between a feisty stance and sickening control freakery. We could not know back then you would soon be saying it was all right to ruin the reputation of a referee with an outright lie, and that you were capable of the kind of boorish performance you put in at Highbury on Sunday.

Presumably you thought you were being smart, even masterful, storming off down the tunnel like that without offering a hand to the vanquished Wenger, and then hurling abuse at the Sky TV people for their "crime" of rerunning shots of Michael Essien's disgusting tackle on Dietmar Hamann a few weeks ago.

You said that Barcelona, your next opponents in the Champions' League, thanked Sky. Wrong, everybody who cares for the morality of football and who isn't always bowled over by the bite of their analysis of their own flagship product, thanks them. They showed up the bruising cynicism that is growing at the heart of your all-conquering team: the £24m signing whose function is becoming increasingly apparent. Essien has talent, no doubt, but against the frail young things of Arsenal's midfield his essential role was highlighted with gut-wrenching clarity. He was there to bully, and no doubt he should have been sent off for his fouls on Lauren and Robin van Persie.

Your team are becoming dauntingly efficient but with each machine-like victory they are becoming a notch more charmless, and in this they are only keeping pace with you.

To be fair, you are far from the first and certainly will not be the last football manager to develop a siege mentality. It was long a basic plank of Ferguson's success, and Wenger has seen more conspiracies than the command posts at MI5 and the CIA. But if their positions were often absurd, if all grace melted at moments of victory and defeat, let's be honest, they never quite carried the baggage you have had to haul to your position of power in English football.

They didn't have to confront the unease which would have greeted any Chelsea success even if you had displayed endless layers of charm and your boss Roman had come over as a merely well-heeled version of Peter Ustinov. But the fact is whatever Chelsea achieve there will be the worry that success has been underpinned by unprecedented and wealth - resources taken from a country where the majority of the population live lives of hardship unimaginable in all parts of this country, let alone the Fulham Road.

So, Jose, there are unanswerable misgivings about the crowning of Chelsea as the undisputed masters of English football. This doesn't prevent admiration for the strength of your work, and the team ethic you have developed at Stamford Bridge. You have done it with a skill which has been at times awe-inspiring. But admiring is not the same as celebrating, or even liking, and anyone beyond your own support who says this is not so is spinning a line.

What it really means is that there is an obligation on you to perform with a lot more understanding of your highly privileged situation. If you don't, if you carry on in the style you displayed at Highbury, the result will be beyond speculation. Even your victories will not inculcate the envy you imagine, because all football supporters are not fools, and a recent visit to Stamford Bridge - for a grinding victory over unglamorous Middlesbrough - confirmed the suspicion that if Chelsea's fans cannot quite believe their luck, if they are pleased with the power of their club, it does not express itself in the kind of joy which is so tangible in places like Anfield and Old Trafford and, in the not so ancient good days, Arsenal.

You will probably hate this, but there is a model you shouldn't ignore, and his name is Rafael Benitez.

Your scorn for his Liverpool is not so convincing. Admittedly you have a series of victories, but they have outsmarted you in Europe and please, as a matter of urgency, drop the fiction that they didn't score against you in that European Cup semi-final at Anfield. The goal was awarded, it is on the record, and if it hadn't been, Liverpool, the whole world could see, were due a penalty and the sending-off of your invaluable goalkeeper Peter Cech.

That's the kind of reality you have to absorb if you are going to win the respect which your achievements are due. You may not know it, but Benitez is drawing a lot of neutral admiration. He isn't backed by seamless millions, he doesn't sneer at the rest of the football world, he doesn't tell lies about referees, he just gets on with the job of building a football team.

There will be quite a bit of unpatriotic support for Barcelona, too, when you collide with them again in the Champions' League.

This isn't pure envy, Jose. It comes from the feeling that you bent the truth terribly when you last met Barcelona, and that victory came through a most cynical foul by Ricardo Carvalho on their goalkeeper. Your silence on that was noted by those who believe in the old truth that these things have a way of levelling out.

One last point: the Barcelona of Ronaldinho and young Lionel Messi play beautiful football. It has brilliance and charm. It can lay a hand on the hearts of the unattached. It is a sad truth that your current affect is one of repulsion.

Yours in sport,

James Lawton
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Postby stmichael » Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:48 pm

inglis5 wrote:I just read a brilliant article by James Lawton. It sums up everything that is wrong with Chelsea and Mourinho (and good about Liverpool and Rafa). I'd be interested to know what you think....

An open letter to Jose Mourinho from the Independent's Chief Sports Writer on the ugly truth behind Chelsea's ascent
Published: 20 December 2005
Dear Jose,

Not so long ago, when you were a figure of hope rather than darkness, you said you were a star in your own movie. We could all enjoy that; it implied fun and celebration of outstanding deeds. It even added a little to the gaiety of the football nation. But now we have a better idea of the kind of movie you had in mind.

From where you are sitting, in the penthouse of your mind, you may not have noticed that it is turning into a grotesque mix of Sweet Smell of Success and Citizen Kane.

You have blown it, Jose; not in terms of column inches or television exposure or advertising spin-offs or security at the heart of your oil-rouble empire, but in the regard of all those who long for new messiahs of the game, men like Busby and Stein who gloried in their teams and their achievements and didn't scramble in such unseemly fashion to be at the heart of the reflected glory.

To tell you the truth, Jose, your current performance would look bad enough on reality TV.

You have jettisoned style for some chintzy version of celebrity for its own sake. Some woolly-minded observers say that your antics provide a valuable service to the team, that it deflects attention from them, allows them to go about their relentless work. Well, here's a fact: I never saw a great football man, and this includes Ferguson and Wenger, who willingly tried to grab the attention from their players, not on occasion but as a matter of carefully calculated course.

You know why? Because they are football men to their bones and they know that their great glory will always be the performance of their players. That's why they are so excitable and natural on the touchline. Wenger can be a cold fish at times, God knows, and he has that reputation among rival managers, but he doesn't pose, he bares his hopes and his fears and he doesn't turn everything into his own glory - and if Ferguson was not ready to salute his team, and express his gratitude, why would he run along the touchline like some demented schoolboy in the tuck shop when United achieve something extraordinary?

The harsh view of your own self-absorbed act must be that it can only be explained by your own lack of a significant playing career.

You never knew the cheers from the terraces, and now it is presumably not enough for you to shape great achievement through your talent for coaching and plotting a set of winning tactics. Now you have to plunder the glory of your players while it is white-hot.

The last time I wrote to you it was, believe it or not, in a spirit of avuncular concern. I thought, like so many others weary of the back-biting and self-interest of Ferguson and Wenger, you were a star on the cusp of shining a brilliant light on English football and that all you needed to do was rein in the cockiness, not entirely but to a certain pleasing degree, and then march on to only the heavens knew where along the peaks of achievement.

It was in that phase when you were still capable of wit rather than appalling bombast, but a lot of people know better now. It has become apparent you don't know the difference between a feisty stance and sickening control freakery. We could not know back then you would soon be saying it was all right to ruin the reputation of a referee with an outright lie, and that you were capable of the kind of boorish performance you put in at Highbury on Sunday.

Presumably you thought you were being smart, even masterful, storming off down the tunnel like that without offering a hand to the vanquished Wenger, and then hurling abuse at the Sky TV people for their "crime" of rerunning shots of Michael Essien's disgusting tackle on Dietmar Hamann a few weeks ago.

You said that Barcelona, your next opponents in the Champions' League, thanked Sky. Wrong, everybody who cares for the morality of football and who isn't always bowled over by the bite of their analysis of their own flagship product, thanks them. They showed up the bruising cynicism that is growing at the heart of your all-conquering team: the £24m signing whose function is becoming increasingly apparent. Essien has talent, no doubt, but against the frail young things of Arsenal's midfield his essential role was highlighted with gut-wrenching clarity. He was there to bully, and no doubt he should have been sent off for his fouls on Lauren and Robin van Persie.

Your team are becoming dauntingly efficient but with each machine-like victory they are becoming a notch more charmless, and in this they are only keeping pace with you.

To be fair, you are far from the first and certainly will not be the last football manager to develop a siege mentality. It was long a basic plank of Ferguson's success, and Wenger has seen more conspiracies than the command posts at MI5 and the CIA. But if their positions were often absurd, if all grace melted at moments of victory and defeat, let's be honest, they never quite carried the baggage you have had to haul to your position of power in English football.

They didn't have to confront the unease which would have greeted any Chelsea success even if you had displayed endless layers of charm and your boss Roman had come over as a merely well-heeled version of Peter Ustinov. But the fact is whatever Chelsea achieve there will be the worry that success has been underpinned by unprecedented and wealth - resources taken from a country where the majority of the population live lives of hardship unimaginable in all parts of this country, let alone the Fulham Road.

So, Jose, there are unanswerable misgivings about the crowning of Chelsea as the undisputed masters of English football. This doesn't prevent admiration for the strength of your work, and the team ethic you have developed at Stamford Bridge. You have done it with a skill which has been at times awe-inspiring. But admiring is not the same as celebrating, or even liking, and anyone beyond your own support who says this is not so is spinning a line.

What it really means is that there is an obligation on you to perform with a lot more understanding of your highly privileged situation. If you don't, if you carry on in the style you displayed at Highbury, the result will be beyond speculation. Even your victories will not inculcate the envy you imagine, because all football supporters are not fools, and a recent visit to Stamford Bridge - for a grinding victory over unglamorous Middlesbrough - confirmed the suspicion that if Chelsea's fans cannot quite believe their luck, if they are pleased with the power of their club, it does not express itself in the kind of joy which is so tangible in places like Anfield and Old Trafford and, in the not so ancient good days, Arsenal.

You will probably hate this, but there is a model you shouldn't ignore, and his name is Rafael Benitez.

Your scorn for his Liverpool is not so convincing. Admittedly you have a series of victories, but they have outsmarted you in Europe and please, as a matter of urgency, drop the fiction that they didn't score against you in that European Cup semi-final at Anfield. The goal was awarded, it is on the record, and if it hadn't been, Liverpool, the whole world could see, were due a penalty and the sending-off of your invaluable goalkeeper Peter Cech.

That's the kind of reality you have to absorb if you are going to win the respect which your achievements are due. You may not know it, but Benitez is drawing a lot of neutral admiration. He isn't backed by seamless millions, he doesn't sneer at the rest of the football world, he doesn't tell lies about referees, he just gets on with the job of building a football team.

There will be quite a bit of unpatriotic support for Barcelona, too, when you collide with them again in the Champions' League.

This isn't pure envy, Jose. It comes from the feeling that you bent the truth terribly when you last met Barcelona, and that victory came through a most cynical foul by Ricardo Carvalho on their goalkeeper. Your silence on that was noted by those who believe in the old truth that these things have a way of levelling out.

One last point: the Barcelona of Ronaldinho and young Lionel Messi play beautiful football. It has brilliance and charm. It can lay a hand on the hearts of the unattached. It is a sad truth that your current affect is one of repulsion.

Yours in sport,

James Lawton

just about the best article i've read all year :bowdown
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Postby zarababe » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:00 pm

inglis5 wrote:You will probably hate this, but there is a model you shouldn't ignore, and his name is Rafael Benitez.

Your scorn for his Liverpool is not so convincing. Admittedly you have a series of victories, but they have outsmarted you in Europe and please, as a matter of urgency, drop the fiction that they didn't score against you in that European Cup semi-final at Anfield. The goal was awarded, it is on the record, and if it hadn't been, Liverpool, the whole world could see, were due a penalty and the sending-off of your invaluable goalkeeper Peter Cech.

That's the kind of reality you have to absorb if you are going to win the respect which your achievements are due. You may not know it, but Benitez is drawing a lot of neutral admiration.

Mmm what we've always known.

Mourinhio, is troubled by Benitez, he fears what the Boss is maticulously building and realises that Gerrard saw it and why he chose to stay  :nod
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Postby inglis5 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:22 pm

As you might have guessed, I really liked the article. I think he articulates really well why so many people don't like Chelsea. It's a far more destructive piece than your typical - Jose's a w*nker, Chelsea have just bought the league, their fans are rubbish - article that tends to get regurgitated every few weeks.... It's also nice to read that Rafa is so highly regarded by all football fans and journalists, not just ours.
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Postby greenred » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:26 pm

Yeah,great article.Its nice to see a journo hit the nail on the head for once.Thank God we picked Rafa over the so called "special one".
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Postby zarababe » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:28 pm

Oh the boss is well respected, but now the British press are feeling the 'genius' of Benitez and realise, that what he is doing at our grt club is sustainable and has longevity :)
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RAFA.. MADE THE PEOPLE HAPPY !

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Postby jonnymac1979 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:35 pm

That cock was actually on Parry and Moores' shortlist with Benitez and Curbishley to eventually replace Houllier until the first act of his arrogance - running up the touchline when Porto scored at Old Trafford in that Champions League quarter final in 2004.

Pardon me for not knowing about the Portuguese league, but who had heard of this prick before then?  I know some smartarse will have somewhere but honestly, the whole media see him as some kind of Messiah who is here to deliver our league from Ferguson and Wenger.  Had Paul Scholes' clearly onside disallowed goal in that game counted, he might not be in charge of Chelsea now.  Who's Jose Mourinho?

By the way, I don't care that Manchester United were dumped out of the Champions League that year by Porto, I'm not crying over the referee or defending Paul Scholes, the mingebag, but I would have took Manchester United going through over Mourinho's ego being unleashed all day though, thank you very much.

Good article.  I'll keep my eye out for this journo.  Who does he write for again?
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Postby JC_81 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:49 pm

Great article.

Mourinho loses more respect day by day.  I really hope Barce give them a lesson in how the game should be played when they meet.

Those comments about Essien are spot on.  Mourinho signs a talented player for 24 million after chasing him all summer long, then deploys him to do the same job that plenty of lower league players could do, I don't understand it.
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Postby jonnymac1979 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:28 pm

john craig wrote:Mourinho loses more respect day by day. 

Don't speak to soon. 

The media will be kissing his arse again in a couple of weeks as sonn as Essien goes a game or two without fouling anyone seriously and Chelsea put in a thouroughly decent performance.  They're far too machine-like to applaud at the moment.
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Postby inglis5 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:53 pm

johnnymac - James Lawton is the main football writer for the Independent. Once this topic dies down, I'll post his article about the Champions League final...
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Postby jonnymac1979 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:56 pm

PM it to me and I'll post it in the News and Articles Section anyway. :)
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Postby Red Indian » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:57 pm

Too right.  Chelsea will thrash someone 4-0 and the media will be kissing their :censored: again.
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Postby RUSHIE#9 » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:04 pm

This article is somewhere between  :nod  and  :bowdown .
This is the first time a journalist from a national newspaper has criticised the so called 'SPECIAL ONE' and it's about feckin' time. How the hell they can't see what the majority of football fans can see in this country is beyod me. The point about him doing anything to take the spotlight from his players IS SO TRUE.You only have to look at his antics on the bench on sunday when he was accepting high 5's from his coaching staff as if he'd actually gone out on the pitch and one the match himself without any help from anybody else; that isn't just arrogance - to me that is pure egotism and extremely bad management; rightly after a good win the manager deserves credit 'cos he has decided on the tactics and the team but what are his players supposed to think when they see him acting like he did.
As for him being the SPECIAL one what exactly has he achieved in football? OK he has one the premiership but who couldn't with that budget or lack of budget, he won the Champs lge but who exactly did Porto have to face in the tournament that was a top rated side in europe, well i'll tell you Fucking nobody, they had real madrid in the group stages and didn't beat them once, then the hardest team they faced in the knockout stages (AFTER QUALIFYING 2ND) was Man Utd and then as we all know they only went through after a cr@ppy keeper dropped a bollok and as for being champions of portugal - BIG WHOOP it's not exactly the hardest league around (the bundesliga is probably harder). IMO it's not exactly the makings of anything special and this maybe looking through red tinted glasses but I think Rafa has achieved just as much if not more through doing things the hard way by achieving success on a shoestring budget and against some very tough opposition.

END OF RANT

(FECK JOSE!!!  :D )
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Postby LFC #1 » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:31 am

Jose will probably try and sue him for defamation or some such rubbish. Cheers for posting it inglis, best article I've read on the whole Chelski situation thats for sure.
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Postby babu » Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:36 am

jonnymac1979 wrote:
john craig wrote:Mourinho loses more respect day by day. 

Don't speak to soon. 

The media will be kissing his arse again in a couple of weeks as sonn as Essien goes a game or two without fouling anyone seriously and Chelsea put in a thouroughly decent performance.  They're far too machine-like to applaud at the moment.

I don't have the best footballing knowledge but I was wondering something.

Essien has been in the limelight for dirty play for awhile now.
Members on this forum have been calling him a dirty kunt for awhile now, increasly after that tackle on our Kaiser, LFC#1 is quite vocal about.

Rushie said in an earlier post he can't understand why Jose deploys Essien in a role lower league players can fullfill.

My question - was essien always a dirty player or is it the manner that Jose is playing him, makes him appear to be a kunt of the lowest order?
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