How rejection fuelled Mourinho’s second Champions League triumph

“To find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet. The most beautiful defeat of my career.”

Acclaimed English novelist Thomas Hardy and former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho.

At first glance, not obvious kindred spirits.

But Hardy’s thoughts – and Mourinho’s hard-line pragmatism – actually make the origin of the above lines ambiguous: a post-match quote or a poet’s postscript?

Understanding the origins and making of Mourinho is a key tenet of a new BBC Sport documentary – How to Win the Champions League: Jose Mourinho.

A huge chunk of that insight can be boiled down to a life-altering change in direction in the summer of 2008.

A sliding doors moment in the corridors of the Camp Nou that profoundly changed Mourinho.

“That’s the moment where Mourinho becomes the Dark Lord,” Guardian journalist Jonathan Wilson explains.

The moment to take tiki-taka to task: “If they’re going to play to entertain, I will make sure nobody has any fun ever again.”

The rejection in question came in the summer of 2008. Barcelona were looking for a new manager, having sacked 2006 Champions League winner Frank Rijkaard.

The choice was between Mourinho and one-time mate Pep Guardiola.

The pair had collaborated closely in the second half of the 1990s when Mourinho was working as Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal’s assistant, and Guardiola was the Barca captain.

The decision was not necessarily taken on merit – given that Mourinho had a Champions League and Premier League title on his CV, while Guardiola had only just finished his first year in management with Barca’s reserves.

It was a decision that was extremely unpopular with Mourinho and went on to fuel his methods – and fuel, most notably, a desire to put victory above all else.

The zenith of Mourinho’s pragmatism, and arguably his entire managerial career, came at the Nou Camp on the way to the second of his Champions League wins, in 2010. Mourinho’s Inter arrived at the home of Guardiola’s reigning European champions with a 3-1 lead from the semi-final first leg.

The Barca faithful believed. “The atmosphere before the match was intense,” Zanetti remembers. “When we went on to the pitch at the start there was an enormous banner with ‘comeback’ written in Catalan.”

A 28th-minute red card for Inter’s Thiago Motta strengthened that belief. But it also ushered in a 60-minute display of defiance that Mourinho believes defined himself and his entire career.

“If I could choose one of my team’s most emotional performances in my career of more than 20 years, I have to choose that one,” Mourinho says of that Nou Camp night.

“We go to Barcelona and we know what was waiting for us in terms of atmosphere and the amazing quality of that team.

“To play with 10 players in Barcelona becomes epic. You need heroes. You need to have the best out of everybody.

“I think I was brilliant in the way I organised the team.

“We defended with everything we had – with hearts, with souls.

“This is the most beautiful defeat of my career.

Having got to the final, Inter went on to win it with Mourinho once again coming out on top in a friend-turned-foe showdown – this time against a Bayern Munich side managed by his former Barca boss Van Gaal.

For the Portuguese it was a second Champions League triumph – and, for the second time, an against-the-odds win, in which Mourinho’s man-management skills were front and centre.

Porto’s triumph in 2004 was also an underdog tale (the only side since the turn of the century from outside Europe’s big five leagues to win the Champions League) and also a story where Mourinho’s man-management came to the fore.

Benni McCarthy scored four goals to help them to the final and says of Mourinho: “He was passionate, caring and a master tactician. I had never seen that.

“He was the first manager I encountered who knew almost everything about every single player – the backgrounds, where they come from. How many family members do you have? Are your mum and dad still alive?

“He wanted to know about my upbringing, my struggles, the highs and lows. I just thought that was an unbelievable touch.

“I didn’t even know people in football did that until Jose. I played for a few managers prior to that. None of them knew me. With Jose, it was the complete opposite.

“I was like: ‘wow, what a manager to play for’.

“And you would run through a brick wall for him.”

Mourinho agrees. “The lesson went with me all over my career. When I go to European competition, I always feel that I can win.

“If you build a strong team, a team with great tactical culture, with a great resilience, with mental stability to cope with the difficult moments, especially in the knockout games. You always have a chance.

Mourinho’s man-management style hasn’t always worked of course – his spells at Manchester United and Tottenham featured high-profile spats with high-profile players, such as Paul Pogba and Dele Alli.

But, as former Inter Milan skipper Zanetti attests, during the 2010 Champions League campaign, Mourinho was the master man-manager and creator of a team culture.

Six years after Porto the technique used to forge a team had a South American flavour, but the outcome was the same.

“Mourinho created a family,” Zanetti said. “We created this group during the week, when we had our asados [Argentine barbeques], which Mourinho liked too.

“It was a moment for unity – a family moment.

“I once said I would throw myself into a fire for Jose Mourinho. Our relationship was not merely manager to player or manager to captain, it was much more. It was a very strong human bond, and it always will be.

“Those two years were very significant for me and for him… and will remain in our hearts forever. He taught us so much and he made us believe that we could make history, and we did.”

After both of his Champions League triumphs the Portuguese manager was in a new job within weeks, first time round moving to Chelsea and, in 2010, leaving for Real Madrid.

Once more, it was a realpolitik that punctuates the Portuguese’s career – and would sit well with the realism of Hardy. Getting the job done, and then moving on to pastures new, when you are at the peak of your powers – both managerial and financial.

But in How to Win the Champions League: Jose Mourinho, behind-the-scenes archive footage from the Bernabeu – in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 Champions League final – shows a different side of Mourinho.

The footage shows the Portuguese manager being driven out of the stadium, past a team bus he’d rushed off minutes earlier with barely a word. He’s leaving immediately, with a move to Real Madrid in the offing.

However, when he spots one of his key generals, Marco Materazzi, he’s unable to make such a cold exit. Mourinho gets out of the car and the pair share a tender, tearful embrace before Mourinho goes back to the vehicle and ultimately turns his back on Inter.

His next public sighting was when he was announced as Madrid manager nine days later.

On the face of it the speed of this turnaround suggests Inter was a mercenary means to an end rather than a seminal moment.

“I ran away – I went to the bus to say goodbye, and I didn’t even shake one hand,” Mourinho says.

“I wanted to escape. I think if I get on to the bus, if I go back with them to Milan, if I walk into a full San Siro, if I walk into the Duomo [Milan Cathedral] full of people, I think I wouldn’t go to Real Madrid.

“I think the emotion would stop me to go.

“But I wanted to go. I thought it was the right moment. I had to escape.

“Marco was there. If instead of Marco it was Dejan Stankovic, or Diego Milito or Julio Cesar, it would have been the same story.”

In many ways the duality of that moment defines Mourinho, and the question of how he won his two Champions League titles.

Creating a fiercely loyal relationship with his players off the pitch which ensured the side that stepped on the field would be comfortable both running through walls, and with their backs to the wall.

Fifteen years later Mourinho may have mellowed slightly. His man-management skills and star quality may have waned too.

But the ego, confidence and pride in his career-defining Champions League victories remains as strong as ever.

As Mourinho pointedly remarks, both his Porto and Inter triumphs have not been repeated.

“Why am I now here speaking with you?,” he says.

“It is not because I am now at Fenerbahce, or because I won the Premier League with Chelsea.

“It is because I am a double Champions League winner. That is the reason.

“I think there are other teams and clubs that when you do it, other guys [managers] then do it.

“I do this season. You do next season. Three years later, another will come and then people will be even confused in which season you won it.

“You go to Real Madrid, to Barcelona, to Manchester United, to these big teams and maybe people don’t have the same feeling.

“But you go to Porto and you go to you go to Milan and everybody knows.

“2004 Champions League winner, 2010 Champions League winner.