The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho

That night at the Ciutat de Valencía stadium they began to realise that the most powerful man at the club, the person they would depend on professionally in the coming years, had a mysterious and chaotic side. Something that verged on the delinquent. Granero, Mateos, Dudek, Pedro León, Lass and Benzema, lined up in the dugout and almost all stunned at what they saw, said they had never had a coach like this before. This taunting of an opponent was a new experience. The only one who was not surprised by his behaviour was Lass, who between 2005 and 2007 had played for Mourinho at Chelsea.

The game provided a summary of some of the main problems that Madrid would face from there on in. The league championship, with its draining routine, would be psychologically exhausting, as they would mainly be up against against modest opponents who would be inclined to give up all attacking ambitions.

In the Ciutat de Valencía tactical situations were encountered that, despite their extreme simplicity, were not easy to resolve. With Levante having fully retreated and seeming impenetrable in their own penalty area, Madrid had no choice but to try to pass their way around their opponents until a gap finally appeared. Committed to playing on the counter-attack, as had been the case since pre-season, it was not long before Madrid displayed symptoms of extreme sluggishness. The distance between Levante’s back four, led by Ballesteros, and the goalkeeper Reina was minimal.

Mourinho was immediately aware of the situation. That opening-day draw against Mallorca had left his team only one point ahead of Barcelona. They could lose their lead over Guardiola’s side, who were playing in Bilbao at 10 p.m. that evening.

The nerves in the Madrid camp were palpable, even at the team hotel. That same morning a group of journalists, alerted by Mourinho’s entourage, had gone to the stadium to discuss and film the state of the pitch. Levante’s press officer, Emilio Nadal, was astonished to see them take out a ruler and measure the exact length of the grass, which was long and dry to slow down the ball. It was nothing new in the catalogue of tactics employed by smaller teams to deprive their more skilful opponents of the advantage of a fast pitch. Nothing illegal. A detail, however, that hardly helped keep Mourinho calm. Once the game started it was not long before he left his seat. Seeing Del Horno clearly irritated him.

What Del Horno really liked was pelota vasca, a traditional, fast-moving Basque sport played with a small rubber ball. Football was not so much his passion, more his trade. He had always been a formidable athlete and stood out at youth level for his strength, his power and his ability to arrive late in the penalty area. He was a tenacious man-marker and was surprisingly good in the air. He also stood out for his audacity, both on and off the field. The qualities that enabled him to face any game without the fear of failure also allowed him to live carelessly. A native of Biscay – and wholly attached to the town of Gallarta in the mining heart of the Somorrostro Valley – he would do anything so as not to miss the annual local festivities. One day he signed for Chelsea, Mourinho having personally requested the signing.

‘I signed for Chelsea for four years in 2005,’ he recalls. ‘In 2006, after a season in London, Valencia offered me the same salary but for twice as long. It was an important club – it was Valencia – and it meant returning to Spain. The offer was very good and, although it was a difficult decision, I accepted.’

For the Basque, Mourinho was the coach who opened the doors to the Premier League, the most attractive market in world football, a showcase that allowed him to transform his career. ‘Mourinho was a very accessible coach who took care of everything,’ he says. ‘He was great with me and my family when we arrived in England. I have a very good memory of that year because I had the opportunity to win two trophies. I was very young, and the truth is that he and the people working with him welcomed me and helped me. I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me to be part of a team like Chelsea. For the way he took a chance on me and how he behaved towards me.’

Between 2006 and 2008, Del Horno became the best left-back in Spain. He was regularly called up to the Spanish national squad by Luis Aragonés, participating in the process of qualifying for the World Cup but missing out on the final cut. Sources from the Spanish Football Federation confirm that he suffered a chronic inflammation in his right Achilles tendon during his season at Chelsea, the kind of injury that requires rest to prevent the irreversible deterioration of the affected tissue. The player played on with pain-killing injections. A year after signing his contract at Stamford Bridge, Del Horno could not jump without experiencing severe pain. He did not go to the World Cup but joined Valencia for €8 million. The tendon was badly torn. The two operations that he had on it could, at best, only prolong his career a little, and at great cost. He would have very few games left by the time he came to play Madrid: just 34 more matches in the top division.

On the night of 25 September an enduring football discovery was made as to how to frustrate Madrid. Levante’s game plan was an exercise in renunciation, a strange approach in the Spanish league, where pride in retaining possession of the ball usually prevails over any recognition of inferiority, any dedication to defending or playing on the break. Directed by Sergio Ballesteros, Levante sat back, allowed their opponents to have the ball and dug an impassable trench. They had just three shots on Casillas’s goal, each going wide. But Madrid only managed two shots on target. Never again that season did they have fewer than three shots at goal, proof of the success of Levante’s tactics, and a symptom of the deficiencies in Madrid’s functioning that would persist in subsequent years. These were the reasons for Mourinho’s exasperation and why he turned his anger towards Del Horno. But unlike his colleagues and several members of the opposition, the player did not take Mourinho seriously.

‘Everybody knows,’ says Del Horno, ‘that everyone takes their own path, and when you come together on a football pitch things completely change. That day we had a chance to get the draw; they just couldn’t figure us out. They weren’t counting on dropping two points at a ground like Levante’s. We made things difficult for them and in order to do that we had to use all the weapons available to us. Just as Mourinho used the weapons available to him. He saw he could unsettle a player to get a response from his own team, that’s all there is to it … He is a coach who likes to be close to the players, the matches … Well, he looks after his own interests.’

Mourinho’s attempt to rebuke his former player caught everyone’s attention as the night went on. Del Horno clashed with Ronaldo, claiming a foul, and provoking a free-for-all involving players from both teams. The Madrid coach intervened again against his former player. They exchanged insults. The tension continued until the end. Violence is contagious.

But referee Carlos Delgado Ferreiro only dared to send off Dr Juan Carlos Hernández. A sports medicine specialist with over 10 years of honest service to Madrid, if there was one thing you would never associate with Dr Hernández it was brawling.

More attentive to the developments than Delgado Ferreiro was Sergio Ballesteros, the Levante captain, who had just turned 35. His story is one of local boy made good, although he had to first leave his home town before he could enjoy success. Emerging from somewhere in the ‘Garden of Burjassot’ in Valencia, his talent honed in the harbour club’s youth team, he made his début in 1994 and then went in search of his fortune: four years in Tenerife, one at Rayo Vallecano, three in Villarreal and eight in Mallorca. Then he returned home, well worn both inside and out. He signed a contract with Levante in the summer of 2008, after the club filed for bankruptcy. The alternatives were both extreme: end his career surrounded by debris and decay, or get the team promoted against all odds. On 13 June 2010 the impossible happened. The club with one of the lowest budgets in the second division, and still in administration, won its fourth promotion. At the head of the company stood Ballesteros.

Long and wide like a piece of industrial pipe, Ballesteros stands six foot two. His body resembles a turret from which a leathery head sticks out, turning, featureless, on his not inconsiderable neck. The nickname of ‘Papá’ sums up everything he means to the dressing room. Ballesteros is their natural leader: his presidential voice, his watchful green eyes commanding respect. Everyone see him as the great provider. He misses nothing – and that includes the provocations from the Madrid coach, to whom he quickly conveyed a simple warning. At the final whistle he approached him in the tunnel and repeated it several times.

‘Respect your fellow professionals,’ he said. ‘Respect your fellow professionals …!’

In the 2010–11 season Levante’s players were the lowest paid in the first division. According to a report by Professor José María Liébana Gay for the University of Barcelona, spending on Levante’s staff for that year amounted to €7 million in total. This was followed by €11.7 million at Almería, and €14.4 million in salaries and bonuses at Real Sociedad. All a world away from Barcelona, who set aside €240.6 million of their budget for the payment of salaries, and from Madrid, with €216.1 million as the second highest spenders on personnel in the league behind Barça. Mourinho’s salary alone – about €14 million – was double the wage bill of the Levante team. In this time of fiscal crisis Levante were the club with the smallest total debt to the government. The bankruptcy action had forced them to settle their accounts with the tax authorities.

‘The professionals’ to whom Ballesteros was referring live according to the law of the marketplace; a law that is crueller to the smaller clubs. Eight of the eleven Levante players who played against Madrid in 2010 were in the final days of their careers in the top flight. Del Horno has been without a club since 2012; David Cerrajería, right-back, signed for Cordoba in 2011; Sergio González Soriano, midfielder, retired in 2011; Xisco Nadal signed for Alqueires in the third tier in 2011; Nano, who played in the centre of defence alongside Ballesteros, went to Guizhou in the Chinese league in 2012; the goalkeeper Manolo Reina ended up at Atromitos, a team on the outskirts of Athens in 2011; Nacho González, midfielder, played for Standard Liège and in 2012 signed for Hércules in the second division; after a brief period in the Chinese League, Rubén Suárez, the striker, returned to play for Almería in the second division.

Levante’s training ground is located in the Comarca region of Hoya de Buñol on a plateau surrounded by mountains, dotted with almond trees and lined with ditches. The horizon is marked by the giant metal cylinders of the Cemex cement plant, closed due to a lack of demand. In early 2013 the future of the 150 workers at the plant hung in the balance of rather grim negotiations. Dust particles of crushed materials floated in the air. It was a cold February day with a chill wind, normal in the microclimate of the plain of Buñol, and Vicente Iborra sat in a small room next to the dressing room to explain what kind of club he served.

‘We’re aware of our limitations,’ says Levante’s second vice-captain. ‘The club cannot pay transfers and we’re forced to wait for loan players or free transfers. Because the club that pays the most is the first to choose, we have to wait until the end of the summer. It’s an uncomfortable situation because you start the season with only half the squad guaranteed, and after the league starts two or three more players come in.’

Born in Moncada, Valencia, in 1988 and brought up through Levante’s youth team, Iborra spent his formative years at the club during that crucial time of administration and promotion. Since he was 24 years old he has been a loyal lieutenant to Ballesteros and Juanfran, sharing a sense of administrative duty and talking about the club with the solemnity of an entrepreneur speaking about his investments. Listening to Quico Catalan, the president, was not much different to listening to the players. In his conversation he referred to the crisis, the austerity and the structural problems that constitute the daily struggle in the vast majority of Spanish clubs.

‘We often resort to players who don’t have an important role at the clubs they’re at and who are keen to continue enjoying their football,’ Iborra says. ‘They come here and I think the club’s friendliness is a great calming influence – and now we also have economic stability. People who come feel very comfortable, and they perform to a much higher level. It’s very easy to become committed to the cause.’

The match on 25 September plotted the course for the years ahead when Madrid would come up against many teams who surrendered most of the pitch, together with the ball. It was also an indication of how Mourinho would go about explaining such bad results. The coach’s explanations of the draw in the press room at the Ciutat de Valencía drew subtly on his players’ lack of accuracy in front of goal, obscuring the fact that Madrid had had fewer chances to score than he acknowledged: a meagre balance of just two shots on target meant Mourinho had to avoid recognising that his team had played poorly.

‘I’m concerned about not turning so much attacking football and chances into goals,’ he said. ‘It’s not normal to need so many opportunities. If from six chances we score two or three goals, then OK … But this has been happening from the first game. It was like this against Mallorca, Osasuna … And now against Levante we had some big opportunities but didn’t take them.’

In the draw for the knockout stages of the Copa del Rey, Madrid again found themselves up against Levante. The first leg was played at the Bernabéu on 22 December. If Mourinho had shown signs of nervousness in September, three months later he was bordering on neurotic. After the 5–0 rout suffered against Barcelona at the Camp Nou on 29 November he had embarked on a flurry of team-talks and training sessions that kept the team on constant alert. The preparation for matches had become a continual source of surprise for the squad; the resources drawn on by the coach to motivate the players amazed them and the close proximity of Christmas provided new ammunition to fire up the team. In the dressing room the players interpreted Mourinho’s preparations as his revenge for the two points they had dropped in the league.

Taking advantage of the fact that it was the last game of 2010, Mourinho promised to prolong the Christmas holidays in proportion to the number of goals put past their opponents. To complete the message, he named most of his first team: Casillas, Lass, Pepe, Albiol, Marcelo, Alonso, Granero, Di María, Özil, Ronaldo and Benzema all started. The pre-match team-talk was a masterpiece of motivation. Even the most sceptical of players took to the pitch like men possessed.

Benzema, Özil, Benzema, Ronaldo, Benzema, Ronaldo, Ronaldo and Pedro León scored in that order from the fifth minute to the ninetieth to deliver a historic win: 8–0. The process was painful for the Levante players. Some said that Di María, Marcelo, Özil and Pepe had openly mocked them, repeating the phrase ‘Don’t touch the shirt. You’ll make it dirty,’ which to the ears of the visiting players sounded like a rehearsed insult. Nobody at Madrid would acknowledged this to be true, but the accusations were never officially denied.

‘We were a little annoyed that when they had already scored six goals, the seventh and eighth were celebrated with such enthusiasm,’ recalls Iborra, although those involved in the game itself were not so aware of this. But the watching Levante directors were amazed by the public reaction in the stadium. The Bernabéu, as electrified as the players, celebrated the thrashing and called for Levante to be relegated with the familiar chant: ‘To the Second! To the Second …’

‘I’m very happy with the attitude of my team,’ Mourinho said in the press room with uncharacteristic serenity. ‘I’m happy with the way the year ended. A 2010 that for me, personally, has been fantastic. It’s ended in the best way possible. And also for us – because we played 25 official matches, we won 20, we drew four, and we lost one [the 5–0 against Barcelona] … It’s a very nice record.’

‘I didn’t know that Madrid were that annoyed by Levante,’ confessed their perplexed coach Luis García. ‘We’re a small club but with big values. I’d like it to be remembered that a team with a budget of €450 million drew against one with the most limited budget in the division. Thanks to that point we’re out of the relegation zone and they’re not leaders.’

Madrid were through to the next round but in the Levante dressing room there remained a prevailing feeling of humiliation. Luis García had given the result up and rested Robusté, Xavi Torres, Javi Venta, Juanlu and Ballesteros.

The game was played on Thursday 6 January. Mourinho watched Madrid concede two goals before the final whistle. It was the team’s second defeat of the season, after the 5–0 at the Camp Nou. The aggregate result, however, assured Madrid of a spot in the quarter-finals of the cup.

It was all Levante could do to finish the season in 14th position. Not many teams are better prepared for the annual routine of resistance. It is hard to imagine a club any further removed from Madrid. Their matches played against each other in the league are sporadic clashes that, rather than cranking up any fierce rivalry, have historically served to cement a sense of fraternity. Most of the Levante directors are Madridistas. The family of Vicente Boluda, a former president of Madrid, comes from a long line of Levante directors. As with many provincial clubs, fans’ sentiments are split. The older supporters remember with admiration the visits of the Madrid team of Di Stéfano in the sixties. They were festive occasions. The matches were held at the Mestalla to maximise the size of the crowd, and fans mixed in an atmosphere of brotherhood.

‘We’ve only spent a few years in the first division and people want to follow a team that fights for titles, wins leagues and Champions Leagues,’ says Vicente Iborra. ‘Many Levante fans also follow Madrid or Barça because, after all, they’re the biggest clubs in Spain – and supporting nearby Valencia is out of the question. When they come here to play, the ground is invariably full of people backing those teams. We have no choice but to accept it and play well on the pitch to increase our own support base.’

Madrid returned to the Ciutat de Valencía to play the fourth game of the 2011–12 season on 18 September. They lost 1–0 in what was another heated match. With new coach Juan Ignacio Martínez in charge, Levante refined the approach they had taken the previous year.

‘We knew that if we went after them they’d be better than us both physically and in terms of quality,’ recalls Iborra. ‘We tried to deny them space because we knew that on the counter-attack – and especially in one-on-one situations – they’re the best team out there. We tried to stay very close together on the pitch, help each other, be very committed and take our chances. Fortunately, it went well. We were able to beat them, and other teams realised that if you play them on their terms then you lose 99 per cent of the time. It’s an intelligent way to play them. Don’t allow them space, until they end up feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps in that sense Barcelona are a better side; they know how to find the space while in possession, waiting for the opportunity. Madrid don’t, and teams have realised that you can’t allow them space to run into.’

That second stumble against Levante renewed Madrid’s rivalry with them, hardening the grudge held by Mourinho. He kept up the provocation, although he pursued it via other means, employing Pepe to irritate opposing players and prevent them from concentrating on competing during the game. Casillas’s appeal to colleagues in the Levante dressing room to try to end the resentment between the teams had very limited effect. By the time Madrid showed up at the Ciutat de Valencía to play a league match on 11 November 2012, Ballesteros and his team-mates had identified whom they considered to be the Madrid coach’s enforcers. In particular they singled out Pepe, but also Ronaldo, Di María and Coentrão, all represented by Mendes, Mourinho’s agent and friend, calling them ‘Mourinho’s puppets’. In the first minute Navarro went for a loose ball with Ronaldo and gashed his opponent’s eyebrow with his elbow. Ronaldo took it very sportingly; the bleeding was stopped, a bandage was fixed and he began to play football as best he could. He even scored a goal.

Levante lost the game 1–2. After the match the home players say they saw Pepe dancing in the tunnel. ‘It was as if he were dancing the “jota”,’ said a witness, referring to a traditional Spanish dance, usually accompanied by castanets. ‘He was yelling, “Take that! Take that! Take that …!”’ When he heard about this, Ballesteros went straight to the dressing room and found Pepe heading for the treatment room. Versions of what happened next are conflicting. The Madrid players say Pepe fought bravely, but the Levante players say their captain grabbed Pepe by the neck with one hand while repeatedly hitting him in the head with the other. When he released him, Pepe ran for cover. ‘Dance now!’ roared Ballesteros. ‘Call your boss to defend you.’

The small medical room quickly filled up with about 30 people. Adán, the Madrid goalkeeper, was the first to intervene on Pepe’s behalf, aided by his team-mates. Soon, all the Levante squad were there. Some Madrid players, like Casillas and Albiol, tried to separate the scuffling players. Others took the opportunity to settle old scores. Ballesteros was going around warning Madrid players, ‘Tell Pepe that today he’s laughed and danced, but in two weeks’ time when you go to Barcelona we’ll be the ones laughing.’ Ballesteros, for his part, denied being part of any fight when he was interviewed by several radio journalists as he left the stadium.

The melée had cooled when Juanfran, Juanlu and Iborra exchanged words with some Madrid players. Someone remembered Mourinho.

‘Do you notice that there’s one person missing here? We’re all killing each other and the one who started it all is nowhere to be seen!’

Barça won 0–4 two match days later on the same stage. Levante turned in a serious and rigorous performance, but there were no over-the-top challenges, the two teams exchanged shirts, and at the end of the game Xavi, Puyol and Iniesta asked the senior Levante players about the situation at the club. As ambassadors observing the basic rules of etiquette, they knew that showing some warmth also made practical sense.

The victory helped Barça consolidate their lead in the table on what was a particularly happy weekend for the team. The day before, on 24 November, Madrid lost 1–0 in Seville against Betis, dropping 11 points behind in the table. It was still a month before Christmas but the league was virtually resolved – and Madrid were facing an unexpected crisis. Ever since Sunday morning, Pérez had been making calls to various figures at different levels of the club, from the offices of the Bernabéu to Valdebebas. He consulted officials, technicians, players, as well as his friends and advisors, people who were not legally tied to Madrid. He asked everyone if they believed sacking Mourinho would solve the problems of a squad that was sinking fast in the league.

The games against Levante – the most unlikely of direct rivals – and the Madrid supporters’ urgent need for success meant that the team’s directors, instead of processing serenely as usual through good times and bad, had responded with all the fervour of a firebrand preacher. Ramón Calderón had behaved in a similar way when he took the stand to celebrate his election as president one hot evening in 2006 in the Plaza de Lima. All around, the talk was of the need to copy Rijkaard’s Barcelona, who had lifted the Champions League a month earlier, and the new president was busy trying to please voters by announcing that the hiring of Fabio Capello would guarantee success. Excited, he proclaimed that in 2007 the fans would go to the Plaza de Cibeles to celebrate winning the league ‘any way we can!’

Calderón did not have any written speech but spoke from his heart. The words read by Pérez the day after he began his third term on 1 June 2009, a week after Guardiola’s Barcelona had won their first Champions League, were unusually melodramatic for an executive who had made modesty and calm his trademark between 2000 and 2006. But in the new era there was no room for formalities.

‘We must recover our dreams, our stability and the time we have lost as soon as we can,’ said the new president. ‘Real Madrid has to leave all doubts behind and tirelessly work towards the lofty goal that should always be present in its spirit – to endeavour at all times to be considered the best club of the 21st century. For this board, contributing to the achievement of that goal will be a real obsession.’

Pérez acknowledged that his strategy had two elements: first, the urgent need to make up lost ground on Barcelona, whom he did not name; second, to act with restraint in order not to harm the club’s heritage.

‘Our club has been – and still is – an essential part of football’s history and therefore we must always set a good example,’ he warned. ‘Do not forget that our reputation and our image are the most precious treasures we have earned over the 107 years of our history.

‘In this club our ethics will always be unyielding,’ he concluded. ‘Solidarity will forever be the basic reference point for our behaviour. The challenge that’s now beginning for all of us is possibly the biggest and toughest we’ve ever taken. But I assure you that we’ll make this Real Madrid a great symbol and an example.’

A year and a half after this pronouncement, and spurred on by the coach he had hired to put an end once and for all to Barça’s dominance, Madrid set forth on a series of riotous confrontations with Levante. ‘It was like Madrid wanted to win any way they could,’ recalled Iborra, ‘because they feared that Barcelona were getting away from them.’