The worst kept secret in football is out – José Mourinho is the new man in charge at Manchester United and it may just be a match made in heaven.
After weeks of constant speculation, it has now been officially confirmed that the Special One will take over from Louis van Gaal at Old Trafford and the task for Mourinho is simple – bring the Reds back to the pinnacle of English and European football.
Some people (myself included) were sceptical about Mourinho’s appointment, given his penchant for controversy, so-called negative football and notable failure to bring through youth at any of his previous clubs (including Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid) – the latter two points having proved the major sticking point for so many United fans given the club’s ethos.
But I’m now convinced that this appointment is a perfect match for both parties – United need to regain the fear factor that they have somewhat lost over the past three seasons and Mourinho is a man who desperately wants to repair his reputation after his second spell at Chelsea unravelled quite spectacularly in his third season back, leading to his sacking last December.
Mourinho’s reputation for negative and defensive football is quite unfair – after all, he did manage a Real Madrid side that outscored Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side in two out of three La Liga seasons, while the Inter Milan side that parked the bus against Barca in the Nou Camp also played some magnificent football at times. Even the Portuguese manager’s worst sides (the Champions League-winning Porto side and the back-to-back Premier League title-winning Chelsea side) had the ability to play some thrillingly direct counter-attacking football and win trophies in the process.
The Portuguese manager’s record with youth has also been analysed extensively – and that might be unfair as well. Chelsea have not been known for bringing through youngsters despite their academy’s reputation, while Mourinho did give twenty academy players their senior debut while at Real Madrid.
Mourinho also gave Davide Santon and Mario Balotelli their big breaks during his spell at Inter and while it that he does favour experience over youth at times, he’s not afraid to give youth a chance if they’re good enough and that will bode well for the likes of Marcus Rashford and Timothy Fosu-Mensah, both of whom have shown this season that they will have a big part to play in United’s first-team for years to come.
What United have lacked in recent years is a serial winner – a manager to knows how to grind out results, get the best out of his players and has a touch of arrogance about him – and Mourinho fits that mould perfectly. Some would say that he has a touch of Sir Alex Ferguson about him – and most would agree with that assessment, with both men loving to create a siege mentality around their respective clubs and projecting an “us against the world” scenario that would often prove successful.
And many United fans would have loved Mourinho to replace Sir Alex at the helm after the Scotsman announced his retirement back in 2013 but instead, the Reds plumped for David Moyes, in the idealistic notion that in time, they could transform the former into the next incarnation of Ferguson, just like they did back when the legendary manager joined United from Aberdeen back in 1986.
But three years down the line, two managers and just the one trophy later, United have realised that cannot replicate the ways of the 1980s and 1990s and a club of this magnitude needs a top-class manager to steer the ship – and the 53-year-old hopefully the man to bring the silverware back to the Theater of Dreams.
And the nostalgia factor will come back for many United fans with this appointment, which might make them the most hated club in England once again (due to several factors, but not limited to: Sir Alex, ‘glory-hunting fans’, sense of entitlement due to amount of trophies won and the fact the side was lucky due to the amount of late goals they scored).
United fans would revel in the status that they were hated by everybody else because we knew that we were perfectly entitled to be arrogant – we won almost everything on offer throughout the 90s and the 00s, we had great players at our disposal and we were relentless under Sir Alex, which is why we scored so many late, late goals.
But over the past three years, that sense of arrogance and entitlement has gone out the window as United have had to endure a barren period. Under Moyes, United looked a shadow of the side that had won the Premier League the previous season – a reflection of the fact that the Scotsman looked like a deer in the headlights and totally unsuited to the United job. Under Van Gaal, United regained some of their way. However, the football was generally boring and the side was led by a man who had once been great but had been found out to be a tactical dinosaur in the modern beast of football.
Mourinho has the potential to turn Manchester United that everyone loves to hate again and somehow, that is something that United fans (and myself) will definitely relish. He has the chance to make himself a legend at the same stadium where he first introduced himself to the world with a wild celebration back into, running down the touchline as Porto scored the crucial away goal that helped them beat Manchester United in the first knockout round of the Champions League. They would go on to win the whole thing and the Special One has not looked back since then.
Welcome to the biggest club in the world, José. The Premier League’s about to become a much more interesting place again.
