Promise unfulfilled – inside Mourinho’s Man Utd reign

Twenty minutes with Jose Mourinho in a packed room at Fenerbahce’s training ground in Istanbul on Wednesday reminded everyone present of his magnetism.

From two spells at Chelsea to one at Tottenham, for good and bad, he was impossible to ignore. His ability to attract attention remains almost unmatched.

A Europa League meeting with Manchester United on Thursday at the cauldron that is the Sukru Saracoglu stadium pits him against his second Premier League club, where the desperation for success was at its greatest.

Mourinho left United almost six years ago. But while he is gone, he is certainly not forgotten.

If there is a story that encapsulates Mourinho’s time at United, it comes from the club’s 2018 pre-season tour of the United States.

Among the commercial opportunities on the trip was a “training session” at the impressive UCLA campus in Los Angeles with then Late, Late Show host James Corden.

The event involved scores of local children, coached by Corden, playing against United trio Juan Mata, Chris Smalling and Ander Herrera, led by Mourinho.

Filming was set for early morning, before the scheduled team training session.

Despite an early start following a day off after Mourinho inserted the event into the tour schedule at short notice, the players expressed their willingness to fulfil the commitment.

But at the time of departure, Mourinho was nowhere to be seen. He had gone ahead, the travelling party were told. Upon arrival, security advised that Mourinho was in the dressing room and not in a good mood.

Despite some of those involved being at the venue since the early hours, Mourinho’s involvement, it was being stressed, was very much in the balance.

Watching footage of the event now, none of this is evident. Mourinho did get involved, enjoyed himself and, more to the point, made sure the youngsters had a memory to treasure for the rest of their lives.

Speaking to numerous sources about Mourinho’s time at Old Trafford, the contradiction between dark moods and charm, sometimes swapping within seconds, is repeated by them all.

With the benefit of hindsight, and seeing what United have become, it is acknowledged by many at the club that Mourinho was the right man at the wrong time and would have been a far better appointment in the immediate aftermath of Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure in 2013.

But Mourinho was committed to a return to Chelsea, and United were setting out on a path that seemed to make sense, but ultimately didn’t work out.

The club had opted for David Moyes as the “Chosen One” to replace Ferguson. Moyes is not solely to blame, of course, but he was too cautious in reconstructing a squad his fellow Scot would have made significant changes to had he remained at the helm.

Without Ferguson’s unquestioned authority, mistakes piled on to mistakes and Moyes paid the price for missing out on Champions League qualification that previously had been automatic.

Louis van Gaal followed Moyes because, it was felt, the Dutchman had experience of handling a big club and could guide United back to the top. That didn’t work either.

By the middle of Van Gaal’s second season, attention was starting to turn to Mourinho and not even an FA Cup victory over Crystal Palace stopped a prior agreement to appoint him becoming reality.

United rolled out the red carpet to welcome Mourinho, booking space in the exclusive Claridge’s hotel in London to conduct his welcome MUTV news conference.

“Manchester United is a giant club,” he said. “And giant clubs must be for the best managers. I think I am ready for it.”

Mourinho, the feeling was, would be a three-year manager. It was accepted it might be chaotic and troublesome at times, but the difficulties of dealing with the Portuguese would be balanced by success.

To an extent, the plan came true. Mourinho delivered two trophies in his first season – the only time United have achieved that since 2009. In the second, United were runners-up to Manchester City – albeit at a distance.

It was their first top-two finish of the post-Ferguson era. Mourinho subsequently called it one of the best managerial achievements of his career “because people didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes”.

But Mourinho’s side never gave the impression of being able to compete for the biggest prizes. So, as the arguments and criticisms became more frequent, there was not enough balance to keep Mourinho in a job.

According to one club source, after the 3-1 defeat by Liverpool on 16 December 2018 – a game BBC Sport reported United would be “fooling themselves” to believe they deserved anything from – the call went out to popular former player Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to apply some “soothing balm”.

There are so many notable moments from Mourinho’s time in charge.

Firstly, a personal admission. It was me who managed to spill a glass of water over the notes Mourinho waved to a raptured audience at his unveiling news conference. It was an accident in the middle of a scrum to reclaim phones and dictaphones from the desk Mourinho had been sitting at.

Reaching out, I unwittingly knocked the glass and the water spilled on to the notes. Mourinho picked them up, and left the room. He never came back.

Mourinho took up residence in an exclusive suite in the Lowry Hotel in central Manchester. It was assumed the arrangement would be temporary. It wasn’t.

His stay lasted 895 nights.

Some United staff members cruelly labelled the Portuguese ‘Alan Partridge’ after Steve Coogan’s BBC comedy character, who lived in the Linton Travel Tavern.

Mourinho’s first pre-season tour was a trip to China that had been reduced to eight days by Van Gaal. It ended up being less than that.

Before a Manchester derby in Beijing, City manager Pep Guardiola gave a news conference in a small room at the Bird’s Nest stadium.

With the numbers likely to swell when United arrived, Mourinho was famously captured doing his media duties on the running track around the pitch. The game never took place. Overnight, torrential rain made the pitch unplayable and the match was called off. United flew straight home.

It soon became apparent Mourinho didn’t believe the situation he inherited was up to standard.

Staff were left in no doubt things were done better at his previous clubs Chelsea and Real Madrid. In Jose’s world, it was felt, you were either with him or against him. If you happened to fall into the latter category, life could become very difficult.

One such occasion occurred in October 2018. With major roadworks around the city, United had already been fined by Uefa for the late kick-off of a game against Valencia after their team coach got stuck on the way to Old Trafford.

The club changed their pre-match hotel to the Hilton at the nearby cricket ground. But the route change that Mourinho demanded was rejected, so he walked the half a mile on his own instead.

That was part of Mourinho’s final few weeks at United – the point at which some felt he would be quite happy to get sacked.

It had all started with a botched transfer window, when the demands of club and manager did not appear aligned. Anthony Martial was a particular bone of contention. Mourinho wanted the France forward out – the pair had a disagreement during that pre-season when Martial did not return to Los Angeles after attending the birth of his first child. Mourinho was furious he didn’t return quickly.

Six weeks after Mourinho was sacked, Martial signed a new deal.

Bizarrely, Mourinho’s relationship with MUTV was better before his arrival than it was after he became manager.

Before key Champions League games for both Inter Milan and Real Madrid, he granted interviews to the station when he had no requirement to. He got on exceptionally well with former United midfielder Paddy Crerand, who conducted the second one in 2013 and told Mourinho he should move to Old Trafford.

Once Mourinho was United manager, the feeling persisted that he was more concerned about protecting his own reputation.

After the Champions League last-16 defeat by Sevilla – a tie after which he was criticised for being too conservative – Mourinho went on a lengthy news conference rant about “football heritage”, pointing out the club’s failings and effectively saying they could no longer be considered a top team.

Five months later, he sat in the same news conference room after a 3-0 home defeat by Tottenham demanding “respect, respect, respect” for his three Premier League titles – at the time more than the rest of the top-flight bosses combined.

When he so desired, Mourinho could be absolute box office. Never more so than his match-fixing jibe at then Chelsea boss Antonio Conte, which was staggering and amusing in equal measure.

These were the moments the media lapped up and when staff were kept on their toes.

But the promise of what Mourinho might bring was never quite fulfilled. An EFL Cup and a Europa League were scant reward for huge investment in Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the rest.

When United supporters see their old boss in the opposition dug-out in Turkey, they will do so with some fond memories but no real sense of regret.