Jose Mourinho is the best football coach on the planet.
Inter Milan's Serie A championship is his sixth league title as a manager. He will have finished top of the table in every full season he has led a club — bar the 2006-07 Chelsea campaign in which Roman Abramovich forced Andriy Shevchenko upon him while refusing to sign a badly needed centre-back.
Starting with his first Portuguese title campaign at FC Porto in 2002-03, Mourinho’s teams have not lost a home league fixture for seven complete seasons. Defeat Bayern Munich at the Bernabeu in Saturday’s Champions League final and the 47-year-old will become the youngest man to collect two European Cups as a manager.
Duncan Castles of the Times interviews 'the Special One'.
That Mourinho, unlike Ancelotti or previous Inter managers, has a Champions League final as well as a title race to occupy him has much to do with his overhaul of the squad last summer. Unimpressed by his performances in the big games, he moved Zlatan Ibrahimovic on to Barça in return for €49m and Samuel Eto’o. With some of that cash he took Wesley Sneijder from Real Madrid and Lucio from Bayern. Diego Milito and Thiago Motta were bought from Genoa, and Goran Pandev acquired at the end of a contract dispute.
Simultaneously, Mourinho released a group of thirtysomethings he considered either incapable of or unwilling to adhere to training methods radically different from the Serie A norm. Out went the likes of Adriano and with them went an array of problems.
Mourinho developed a default formation that placed three strikers in a fluid semi-circle around the visionary Sneijder. With a game left to play Inter have scored more Serie A goals than any of the division’s past 10 champions. But the stereotype of negativity still rankles.
“It’s so unfair if somebody thinks that Inter is a defensive team,” he says, harking back to the Champions League. “We played a very difficult group phase very well. After that we beat Chelsea twice, and I don’t remember a team to play like we did at Stamford Bridge. I don’t remember. We play against Barcelona at home, go 1-0 down, then we destroy them and we beat them 3-1. And because of a special game, which is a game to send a team into the final, playing with 10 men, and winning 3-1, people say we are defensive. I think we did it in a fantastic way.
Inter Milan's Serie A championship is his sixth league title as a manager. He will have finished top of the table in every full season he has led a club — bar the 2006-07 Chelsea campaign in which Roman Abramovich forced Andriy Shevchenko upon him while refusing to sign a badly needed centre-back.
Starting with his first Portuguese title campaign at FC Porto in 2002-03, Mourinho’s teams have not lost a home league fixture for seven complete seasons. Defeat Bayern Munich at the Bernabeu in Saturday’s Champions League final and the 47-year-old will become the youngest man to collect two European Cups as a manager.
Duncan Castles of the Times interviews 'the Special One'.
That Mourinho, unlike Ancelotti or previous Inter managers, has a Champions League final as well as a title race to occupy him has much to do with his overhaul of the squad last summer. Unimpressed by his performances in the big games, he moved Zlatan Ibrahimovic on to Barça in return for €49m and Samuel Eto’o. With some of that cash he took Wesley Sneijder from Real Madrid and Lucio from Bayern. Diego Milito and Thiago Motta were bought from Genoa, and Goran Pandev acquired at the end of a contract dispute.
Simultaneously, Mourinho released a group of thirtysomethings he considered either incapable of or unwilling to adhere to training methods radically different from the Serie A norm. Out went the likes of Adriano and with them went an array of problems.
Mourinho developed a default formation that placed three strikers in a fluid semi-circle around the visionary Sneijder. With a game left to play Inter have scored more Serie A goals than any of the division’s past 10 champions. But the stereotype of negativity still rankles.
“It’s so unfair if somebody thinks that Inter is a defensive team,” he says, harking back to the Champions League. “We played a very difficult group phase very well. After that we beat Chelsea twice, and I don’t remember a team to play like we did at Stamford Bridge. I don’t remember. We play against Barcelona at home, go 1-0 down, then we destroy them and we beat them 3-1. And because of a special game, which is a game to send a team into the final, playing with 10 men, and winning 3-1, people say we are defensive. I think we did it in a fantastic way.
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