Success doesn’t come from one thing.
It’s a lot of things working together.
And failure is like that too.
A football team is a rarely a well-oiled, self-propelled vehicle. It’s more like an organism which can blossom but is also be prone to common infections
In any league season only a few teams can consolidate their status consistently. Most others are usually improving or collapsing at various period.
And even if a team is playing well, it needs need new faces or different ideas to keep it motivated and maintain momentum.
When Lippi was at Juventus he said, “Every summer I sell a couple of millionaires, just to keep the others interested.”
The Chelsea meltdown will probably be the subject of several books, and maybe a documentary, and those will appear sooner rather than later, given the media-driven appetitive for churn.
At Chelsea the main thing is to hire an attacking coach.
Because Mourinho’s mindset was defensive.
Porto were skilful athletes who played some abrasive, negative football, as underdogs often have to do against bigger, richer clubs with deep squads.
Roman Abramovich seems to love superstar coaches.
But it was Roberto Di Matteo, a decent bloke and a good manager, who managed to win that elusive Champions League, although he got the chop soon afterwards.
The components of Chelsea’s meltdown have been the subject of a media frenzy almost every day this season, so we’re all familiar with them by now.
Myself, I think Roman wanted Jose to give the kids a chance.
So he wouldn’t let him buy more stars last summer.
Agent Jorge Mendes got them Falcao, who had the worlds most lethal centre forward, but he came on loan. That was always a weird compromise deal, always a mistake, something that was never going to work.
A very demanding manager, Mourinho asks a lot of his players and lives to win trophies so he can boast about being the best.
In August, during the Swansea game, he lost the plot and humiliated Dr Eva in front of the players, the home fans, the whole world. We had never seen anything as vicious as that, even from him. But he didn’t apologise. Dr Eva was suspended from first team duties and left the club.
In another game we saw him bring on Matic as a sub at half-time, then took him off. I was gobsmacked when he did that. Matic has not played a decent game since!
They lost 1-0 at home to promoted Bournemouth, and when they lost 2-1 at Leicester he said that the players had “betrayed” his work with them.
However, Mourinho’s methods were based on carefully planned stopping tactics, putting efficiency far above artistry, and dominating set-pieces at both ends of the pitch.
The future for Chelsea?
Having seen at first hand the ghastly grovelling that goes on around powerful football owners, I have doubts about Roman’s cabal of advisors. They don’t know much about football and never will. But they do know a lot of about club politics.
Going forward, I reckon Chelsea need a different model if they’re gonna find 20,000 more supporters for their proposed new stadium. They need a few local-born guys from the South East of England to give their team more heart and identity.
They already have a dozen talented young players at the club, but there has to be another Harry Kane out there, another Raheem Sterling, another Dele Alli. But if those players had been on Chelsea’s books, they’d never have played for Mourinho because he was too impatient, too paranoid, too scared of losing.
Mourinho was a belt-and-braces manager at Porto in 2004 and still a belt and braces manager 11 years later when he lost his last game at 2-1 at Leicester with two hatchet men, Matic and Ramires, in central midfield.
More local boys is the second most important thing for Chelsea’s future.
The most important is that they need a culture change.
Abramovich must now employ an attacking coach who knows how to train 20 players to play entertaining football that wins games and trophies.
Yes, Mourinho provided unprecedented success and glory but they were also years of paranoia and spite, with far too many despicable episodes of gamesmanship and self-pity.
In the future, Chelsea should try to be more outgoing, more positive, a club that tries to win friends and influence people and show more sporting behaviour.
Policy should come from the top.
After all, silverware isn’t the only thing in football.
The UK is not Amerika yet, despite the colonisation of our unique country by Cola Cola, Sky and other US corporations.