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EarlyPrototype wrote:Sacking Mourinho

Being worth a few billion bucks and having toys that include a luxury yacht, a fleet of fancy cars and, oh, one of the world’s biggest soccer clubs generally means that people don’t often tell you when you’re wrong.

Yet as he reflects on the latest annual disappearance of the one prize all his rubles can’t buy, Roman Abramovich must wish that 30 months ago there had been someone brave or stupid enough to slap his face, pour a bucket of water over his head and scream at him to come to his senses.


Abramovich has made only one huge mistake since he assumed control of Chelsea in 2003, but he is paying for it to this day. By pulling the trigger and firing Jose Mourinho as head coach in a fit of pique, the Russian oligarch set in play a course of events that has caused him nothing but frustration and regret.

In all of those months since, though, there was never a night that stung Abramovich as much as Tuesday, when Mourinho swept into his old domain and showed his old employer just what he let slip through his fingers.

Inter Milan does not have Chelsea’s talent depth and was an underdog to progress to the Champions League quarterfinals despite holding a 2-1 advantage from its first leg at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza. But in a 1-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea was picked apart on its own turf with a surgical precision that must have been agonizing for the club’s fans to watch. The Blues were defeated not by a superior squad but by the unique mind of Mourinho, who used all his knowledge of both his former team and his current one and rolled it into the night that will define his season.

Whichever way you look at it, Mourinho is a special manager. He succeeds wherever he goes and he makes history in the process. He took Porto to the Champions League title in 2003, the only time in the last 15 years that a team from outside the biggest four leagues claimed the trophy. But it was at Chelsea, where he clinched back-to-back English Premier League titles in his first two seasons, that he was the self-admitted “Special One.”

Not many have the nerve to anoint themselves with such a tag. Even fewer have the style to pull it off.

Mourinho made Chelsea his team and in many ways it still is. The backbone of Frank Lampard, John Terry and Didier Drogba, still the club’s three most influential players, remains intact. However, this was a team formulated in one man’s vision and no one else has been able to replicate it. Not Luiz Felipe Scolari or poor old Avram Grant. And not even current boss Carlo Ancelotti, one of the finest coaches in world soccer with a list of credentials beyond question.


Abramovich just has no one left to blame but himself.

The owner is a reserved, slightly awkward, man who keeps the spotlight at arm’s length. He is happy for others at his club to have a higher profile and almost revels in it. Yet he just couldn’t stick with Mourinho, couldn’t bear his persistence in going public with what probably should have remained internal gripes.

The disagreements involved the amount of transfer money that would be placed at Mourinho’s disposal and also had to do with striker Andriy Shevchenko, Abramovich’s personal friend. None of them should have led to a soccer divorce. But Abramovich felt slighted and allowed himself to be convinced that no man, and no coach, could be bigger than a club.

The prospect of winning the Champions League without Mourinho became a tantalizing thought, the ultimate snub to a former friend who had turned foe. So Mourinho departed, Chelsea came within a penalty kick of the Champions League trophy months later and has never as much as sniffed that particular piece of silverware since.

Tuesday night’s defeat in the round of 16 is at complete odds with where Chelsea would like to see itself in the European pecking order and represents serious underachievement. What hurts more than anything for Chelsea is the concept of what might have been.

Mourinho never wanted to go, never wanted to have to seek employment in the arms of another club. Just how much Chelsea still means to him was on full display this week. He still harbors an obsession with the club and sees his time here as his finest work. Yet for all the softness and sentiment, this was a contest he wanted to win more than any other.

Night upon night for the past two weeks, Mourinho pored over video footage from the first leg, remote control in one hand and notebook in the other. As a mark of respect, there was none of his typical prematch trash talk, no mind games aimed at Ancelotti, no trace of bitterness toward Abramovich. Instead, there was just a Champions League masterpiece in its most pure form, on the field of play, to mastermind.

Mourinho found a warm welcome in his familiar corner of West London. Those same supporters who chanted his name like an anthem on a weekly basis for nearly four years did so again for a brief minute before kickoff, an ultimate tribute to the legacy he built and from which he was pushed away. Most worrisome for Chelsea is the thought that when his current work in Italy is done, these visits as an opponent may no longer be so fleeting. Mourinho speaks often and effusively of his desire to return to English soccer, and Sir Alex Ferguson won’t be around at Manchester United forever.

Abramovich will presumably carry on spending his millions on players, coaches and anything else he feels can help him achieve his elusive European dream. However, he may never lose the nagging thought that he had the answer – and threw it away

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EarlyPrototype wrote:Sacking Mourinho