Real Madrid clearly do not subscribe to football’s adage about never going back.
Second honeymoons are a common occurrence for Real Madrid, with 13 of the 52 managers appointed as either interim or permanent hires in the club’s 116-year history afforded returns, some multiple times. Nearly half of that figure, including the likes of Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane, did so across the previous three decades alone.
Such romanticism is particularly on brand for a club nicknamed ‘La Casa Blanca’ with a familiar face back in the Bernabeu’s dugout considered more of a hallmark than a habit.
A third 'do-over' for the Special One
Jose Mourinho is the latest beneficiary of a homecoming in the Spanish capital, 13 years after his original spell ended in acrimony. Attempting to finish what he started is a recurring pattern in the Portuguese’s coaching career, with Madrid becoming the third club he has managed more than once after do-over spells with Benfica and Chelsea.
Still, it was a move which raised eyebrows, just months since clashing with his former employers over the alleged racist abuse of Vinicius Junior by Gianluca Prestianni in the second leg of February’s tempestuous Champions League knockout round play-off tie.
Even before that controversy, little love had been lost during Mourinho’s near decade-and-a-half away. His Bernabeu afterlife became a source of derision as much as intrigue. In 2018, fresh from Manchester United’s Champions League exit to Sevilla, Madrid-based daily sports newspaper MARCA likened him to ‘a washed-up rock star, one of those guys who goes around holiday hotels for pensioners, playing old hits on an organ with the base and percussion playing on a tape recorder’. As similes go, there have been fewer more damning for the now sexagenarian ‘Special One’.
Los Blancos witnessed the beginning of his villain arc and, arguably, its most volatile state in a three-year period where just one LaLiga title and a Copa del Rey constituted major silverware. Unlike the redux periods of Ancelotti and Zidane, president Florentino Perez staked a successful re-election campaign on lightning not striking twice with the two-time European champion’s second coming as he is again tasked with halting Barcelona’s latest period of domestic dominance.
But the signs already appear ominous. The Catalans cantered to last season’s title with an eight-point cushion which would have reached double figures had Hansi Flick’s side not taken their foot off the gas in two of the final three games after seeing off their arch-rivals in the latest El Clasico meeting. Confidence remains high that they can secure further bragging rights against Madrid with the teams all-square on 106 victories apiece in their regular contests while Barca could soon equal, and even overtake, their foes’ previously unparalleled haul of 105 major honours after moving to within two with their 29th title success.
Mourinho, meanwhile, inherits a squad devoid of confidence and discipline as evidenced by the unedifying end of Xabi Alonso’s brief tenure and a stumble to the finish line with his interim replacement Alvaro Arbeloa. The advancement of Father Time also has done little to dim his abrasive tendencies which reared an ugly head in his first spell. High-profile fallouts with Cristiano Ronaldo, Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos pockmarked the end of that tenure as he openly lampooned Perez’s vision for a team of ‘Zidanes y Pavones’, mixing stars such as Zidane with homegrown talents like Paco Pavon. In one fractious press conference, he savaged youngster Pedro Leon – one of Pavon’s successors as inferior to both ‘Zizou’ and Diego Maradona.
Hindsight suggests that Mourinho would have done well to endear himself to a more impressionable crop of players instead of an already powerful dressing room clique. A cursory glance at Madrid’s early summer business follows a similar theme to that dynamic with Bernardo Silva, newly minted World Cup winner Marc Cucurella and Ibrahima Konate among the strong personalities that Mourinho will need to bring on side at their Valdebebas training base. There is also the small matter of ingratiating himself with Vinicius after suggesting he had provoked the racist abuse he routinely suffers, even if the imminent arrival of Yan Diomande has seemingly put the writing on the wall for the Brazilian’s long-term future.
‘Words aren’t enough, because this feels like a mission. This isn’t about me or whether I win, more or less. I’m here to help everybody become better.’
Jose Mourinho
He is, at least, hoping a break from some old habits will avoid past mistakes. Mourinho has already turned down a formal media unveiling, which previously guaranteed a box-office entrance and soundbites aplenty. Shunning the flashbulbs has seen him instead working diligently on the training pitches with the club’s less established players while their household teammates were toiling at the World Cup earlier this summer.
The only utterances that Madridistas have heard from their new manager came in the form of a bite-sized social media clip on the club’s official channels during which he insisted ‘Words aren’t enough, because this feels like a mission. This isn’t about me or whether I win, more or less. I’m here to help everybody become better.’
Mourinho knows that Madrid will be his last big job in elite-level management, having only attracted offers from Roma, Fenerbahce and Benfica after his last spell in the Premier League ended in all-too-familiar fashion five years ago. Failure is not an option but he is likely to have little choice with the deck already stacked against him.
