Mourinho Unemployed For 187 Days, Is Almost Through Watching Entire Golden Girls DVD Set

By: Greg | March 25th, 2008

ggirls It’s International Week and it’s also known as the time when your league and club bloggers really show their mettle. I can choose to go the easy route and take the week off and just devote time to the Euro2008 Portuguese National Team blog over at the good ol’ portugal.worldcupblog.org. But no! I have what appears to be about seven faithful readers left over from my last run and maybe one or two new ones here so I will NOT disappoint you. I spent most of my teenage and college years disappointing about the same number of women so I’ve used up my life’s “disappointment” credits already…

Therefore I remind you today, as a sad, reminiscent, Chelsea fan and huge Jose Mourinho supporter, that The Special One has sat at home, collecting unemployment for 187 days now. Chelsea have just come off a massive win over Arsenal and the Stamford Bridge faithful showered Avram Grant with lovely song of Mourinho’s name and “You don’t know what you’re doing” while he was making subs and trying to turn the match around. Incidentally the match DID in fact turn around and Chelsea came from behind to win 2-1. However classless the chants may have been, I couldn’t help but feel like the team has lost a great deal of its mystique now that Mourinho is gone. Grant could hop in a time machine and grab Pele at his prime and Franz Beckenbauer on his way back, insert them for the likes of Salomon Kalou and Joe Cole and he’d still be questioned. Why? Because he’s not Jose Mourinho.

Mourinho is not some infallible super boss who knows precisely how to affect the outcome of every match so that Chelsea are guaranteed victory. He doesn’t have to be. The great thing about Jose is that he makes you think that he has everything under control, no matter what may be taking place on the pitch. He sits, smugly with his arms crossed, watch face which wouldn’t probably fit around Flava Flav’s neck protruding from his Armani coat and just seems to know exactly how it is all going to play out. His wry smile and arrogant attitude intimidate the opposition to the point where they’re not sure if it’s all an act or if he really does have some sort of supernatural ability. Again, the point is, he doesn’t have to have that supernatural ability, just the air of it. Avram Grant looks like a frightened, peevish school boy half the time, the proverbial deer in headlights.

For all we know, Grant might be a brilliant tactician, better than Mourinho even. But it almost certainly will never feel that way. Whatever team Mourinho ends up with will be paying a great deal of cash for his services, there is no doubt about that. However, they’re paying for a lot of tactical ability and getting a whole hell of a lot of intimidation and flair, which often times goes even farther than the ability to set the pieces on the green and white chess board.

With all of this considered, according to Spanish rag Sport, Real Madrid are apparently drinking the Kool Aid and are going to go in a completely different direction next year. They plan to sign on the aforementioned Special One and bring in a midfield trio of Cristiano Ronaldo, Ricardo Quaresma, and Kaká. After they get done with those transfers, they will have to sell the rest of the team off and mortgage the Santiago Bernabéu, so I hope Mourinho is fit enough to start himself in goal. Wherever Mourinho goes, this type of sensational stuff will follow. I just wish he’d be back on the touchlines at Stamford Bridge and not crushing my club’s nuts next year from the Recaro seats at the Nou Camp.