By the time Jose Mourinho returned to Premier League management after 11 months out of the game and those few seasons at Manchester United that had seemed to last 11 years, he arrived at Tottenham Hotspur last November as the humbled one.
That’s right: no capital letters.
The arrogance of “The Special One,” which he acknowledged when he arrived at Chelsea as manager in 2004 and then backed up with two separate shifts with the Blues — and at Inter Milan and Real Madrid in between — mostly was gone when he took over Spurs. How the new-look Mourinho has managed since replacing Mauricio Pochettino is the primary subject of another episode of “Countdown” on DAZN, this one titled, “The Special Ones,” which also touches on Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Leicester City’s Brendan Rodgers.
Mourinho understood the situation he entered at Tottenham, with the team sitting in 14th place after a dozen games, because it essentially was the same as he’d exited at Man U the previous December: a talented team massively underachieving as the players declined to embrace their coach’s message.
“The players had stopped running for Pochettino,” Premier League legend Alan Shearer says in the “Countdown” program. It was that simple. And fixing it would be complex.
Mourinho would be an ideal person to find a solution, but only if he were willing to change some of his approach to managing. At Man U, he’d finished in sixth place, second and were sixth again when he was fired near midseason.
He’d fought openly with his most talented player, Paul Pogba, who was the best player at the 2018 World Cup and won the trophy with France, then returned to performing dismally when he again worked with Mourinho. “There are things I that I cannot say,” he said then. “Otherwise, I will get fined.”
There has been little of that with Tottenham since Mourinho arrived. Spurs were averaging 1.16 points per game under Pochettino; they’re at 1.59 under Mourinho, and they’ve been without superstar forward Harry Kane since he hurt his hamstring on New Year’s Day. They would have to accelerate that to climb from their current eighth-place position into Champions League contention, but they’re only four spots behind Man U for that final spot.
“It’s still not Jose Mourinho’s team yet, so I think we have to wait until next season,” former Arsenal star Ian Wright says. “He’s going to have a fit Harry Kane. Is he going to get the signings he wants? Because if he does, he’s a winning manager. He wins things.”
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