As many of you can probably tell, I’m a Chelsea fan of a fairly recent vintage. When NBCSN picked up the Premier League contract, they ran a big “Pick your club” promotion. As I was souring on American football (12 minutes of game action in a three-hour broadcast?!) and my daughter was growing into the sport, I went thru the exercise. I couldn’t go with Arsenal or Man U...too popular. Same really with Liverpool. Man City felt like front-running. I toyed with Norwich because I dug their uniforms and with Hull because they’re the Tigers (I’m a Detroit guy from way back), but didn’t want to toss in with a team that would struggle (I follow plenty of those...like I said, Detroit guy). I settled on Chelsea because they were the Blues (also a Michigan guy), the crest had lions, they had some great players (Lampard is still my fav player, even tho I only had him for two years)...and they had this charismatic new (old) coach who had the balls to refer to himself as “The Special One.” I was all in with Mourinho. Calling Wenger a “specialist in failure” was epically hilarious to me. American coaches just don’t talk that way. It’s drab cliches or nothing at all. And we won. It (he) cemented my fandom. But I didn’t love his style, and as the locker room soured in him, so did I. His petulant act wasn’t so charming when we were losing and he was blaming everyone but himself. I was okay to see him go and a little mortified to see him join Man U (which in my time as a fan has been primarily an also-ran). I’ve taken some morbid enjoyment from the Kabuki theater that the club has become, but now that he’s been cut loose I feel sad(?) for him. He’s a guy you have to love to hate. If he was one of the League’s premier villains, aren’t we poorer without him? You are all longer standing fans than I, how do you feel about Mourinho? Is he your Special One, or has his act worn itself thin? And what’s his next chapter? Germany or Italy? PSG?
I love the first version of Jose. I despise the current version. He's jaded and just not that good anymore. For me, my general attitude towards him will improve if he stays out of football for a bit.
Jose is a key and important part of Chelsea's history. I still like him. The Mourinho after Madrid? Yeah, I don't like that guy but his worst traits were exacerbated and Madrid was never a place he should have gone to. However, he's always had those traits. Always. Remember, he didn't exactly make friendly comments about players his first time around (Remember his comment about Carvalho needing an IQ exam?) I love Jose, guy was amazing his first stint for us but it sucks to see him like this. EDIT: I will add that Mourinho getting on Wenger's nerves was always great. The fact that they got into a fight over a Christmas card of all things was absurd.
Mourn him? No. He's left each club on a very sour note and got paid...PAID! That said, he's part (huge part) of Chelsea's history and will forever be known for that. I don't understand what happened to him post Madrid, but the man changed. I never liked that version of Jose. I wish him luck, but he should either take a 2-year break and come back to manage somewhere else but England, manage Portugal, or become a pundit.
As JT said in an interview, Jose hates losing and is unbearable when it happens. It didn't happen much in his first stint but later on teams figured him out. He more he lost, he more he became jaded.
I love Mourinho and I always will. His declaration of being a "special one" upon his arrival at Chelsea earned him his nickname; and it also was the first step of me getting into the sport. Mourinho is the reason that I began supporting Chelsea. I think that you don't pick a team as much as the team picks you; and in that moment of Mourinho poetry, Chelsea picked me. That said, I didn't always love the things he did. His behaviour regarding Dr. Carneiro was completely wrong; that was the only time that I felt embarassed about him. Still, I don't think that he deserved to get fired; a title-winning manager just about never deserves the sack during the very next season. (This goes for Ranieri at Leicester, too.) I always feared the thought of Mourinho going to Manchester United. When he came back to Chelsea, I thought that we had dodged the whole United thing. Little did I know. Seeing him at Real Madrid, a club which I strongly dislike, was bad enough. I tried to deal with that cognitive dissonance as well as I could. But seeing Mourinho at United, the club which I hate most, was very, very difficult. I want Mourinho to succeed; yet I cannot in good conscience root for United to win. There was literally no answer to this; it was the most tortuous thing that I as a sports fan have experienced since Rick Cerone joined the Red Sox. I took no pleasure in watching Mourinho flounder at United. And I cringed at his treatment of Pogba. I viewed the whole sordid affair through a kind of squint. But it is over now, and that is what is important. Wherever Mourinho goes next, I can root for him openly. I hope that the Chelsea supporters will look at it that way. The treatment that he received upon his most recent visit to Stanford Bridge was nothing short of ugly. When you combine that with the recent Nazi-related activity of the Chelsea Headhunters, the image of the fanbase has taken quite a beating. I was drawn into supporting Chelsea because of Mourinho; but I got very comfortable with the team on account of its cosmopolitan identity. I loved the fact that the club was a leader in bringing in players to England from all around the world. And of course I liked that the club has a rich owner who is willing to bring these players in. I have zero patience for the goofballs who deride "modern football"; I am an enthusiastic supporter of this approach. Chelsea, and later Manchester City, are doing things the right way. To the whining babies who complain that their clubs cannot keep up, I say: get better owners. That's what Man City did, and they went from being a perennially relegation-threatened nonentity to being a mighty world-class power. Even before Man City founded NYCFC, I had a great respect for them, going back to the Thaksin Shinawatra ownership. And I am very proud that my hometown team is associated with a club that is now known as one of the strongest competitors in the world. (The fact that City are United's biggest rival doesn't hurt my appreciation for them, either!) This is all part of Chelsea's legacy. Chelsea's excellence has forced the other Premier League teams to spend in order to keep up, and has as a result raised standards througout the league. For this, every supporter of every Premier League team owes Chelsea a debt of gratitude. And the enduring symbol of this transformation, of Chelsea's emergence as a global phenomenon and as a game-changing influencer, is José Mourinho. Mourinho for me is football; indeed, he is the most interesting figure in all of sports. And he will always be a Chelsea hero.
I wish Mourinho well and hope he can find his love for the game again. He would do well to take an extended break and perhaps find a job back in his home country when he does return where the pressure is lower. He, more than anyone else, re-defined Chelsea in the Roman era. He came in to replace a very popular man and manager and did so with an arrogance and swagger we had never seen. It was more akin to what we would expect from a Fergie who portrayed a bullet proof type of a personality. He was given the keys to the kingdom and obviously money to spend but he not only delivered his promises, he exceeded them and took us to unprecedented heights. At the end of that first era we saw where the cracks would start to appear and unfortunately for him they got worse over time, with the Real Madrid experience pushing him hard into what we see now which is an increasingly depressed, moody and divisive figure. What he used to have as part of his natural approach became ever more forced (his digging out of young or key players, his commitment to defensive formations, his complete lack of accountability) and it was sad to see. He would use team selections to send messages to the board (don't support me in the market, fine, I'll start a CM, RB and back up winger in the heart of my defense) and could never do any wrong. He needs to press the reset button hard and go back to basics. I will always appreciate what he did for the club and enjoyed his time here more than not, especially early on. As others have said version 2 was unlikeable and not a healthy personality to have around the club but it's possible to have opposite feelings about one person. Best of luck Jose
I heard an out there rumor that the LA Galaxy are interested in Mou. I don’t watch much of the MLS but I’d love for him to go there. Would be epic seeing him and the media interact. Zlatan has already been crazy entertaining the two of them in the same side would be nonstop giggles.
In time, Jose will be remembered fondly by Chelsea fans, however, when he joined United I lost a lot of respect for him. For me, that was a little treacherous. I am glad that he failed at United. I hope he can now return to Real Madrid probably not going to happen, but it would keep their paws of our Hazard.
Treacherous? He clearly went there with the sole intent of destroying the club from within. Agent Jose did a number on them
Looks like Mourinho said no to Benfica, not ready to return to Portuguese football. Wants another job at a top club. Will he get one? It feels like such a devils bargain: win some silver, but watch some pretty boring football and have your team self-destruct in two years.
Dude needs to rest, realize that every other club isn’t Madrid, and get on with it. But that’s not in his nature.