men to find professional harmony, to me, resembles two randy stags, nostrils flared, bristling, with angry erections, locking horns over which one is going to bite on a branch and be Bambi’s mummy.
‘Mourinho provoked a kind of neutered lust. I enjoyed his manipulative interviews and eccentric outbursts’
Ultimately Chelsea are Abramovich’s club and there could be only one winner but as a result we, the English nation, the Premier League and the media, have lost an intriguing and charismatic figure.
Like most people I became aware of Mourinho when he darted down the touchline arms aloft in that coat, at Old Trafford, having engineered Porto’s victory over United. ‘What a twit,’ I remember thinking. The fact that the coat became independently famous is a testimony to the unique place he attained in the firmament of top-flight bosses. What other garments have secured such cachet? Brian Clough’s green sweatshirt? Arsène Wenger’s specs? Fergie’s gum? Unless Roy Keane starts turning up to matches in cowboy boots it’ll be a while until personal style makes such an impression from the dugout.
His departure is significant enough to prompt comment from figures as diverse as Gordon Brown and my mum – ‘He made a huge impact in such a short time’ and ‘That dishy manager’ respectively. Neither of them cared when Alan Pardew left West Ham.
We can glean from this momentous event several things: Abramovich will be satisfied with nothing less than immediate success in Europe, he wants attractive football and he wants to stick his oar in whenever he fancies and put his mates in the team. One of the difficulties is that most of the great footballing dynasties have achieved success with practical, as opposed to flamboyant, football. Milan, Juventus and recent Real Madrid sides have prioritised winning over all else whereas teams like Barcelona or Arsenal always have moments of vulnerability and but two European Cup wins between them.
Personally, I’m sad about it. I’ve mentioned in this column before that Mourinho’s presence at Chelsea prevented me from harbouring the hatred expected of a West Ham fan for our rivals across the capital because he provoked in me a kind of neutered lust. I enjoyed his aloof, snooty, manipulative interviews and eccentric outbursts; calling dear Wenger a voyeur and Frank Rijkaard a pervert. What about when he fled from police with his unquarantined lapdog? That’s berserk, I can’t imagine any other manager embarking on such a mad quest.
Sam Allardyce would not try to sneak his cat into a disco, David Moyes would never ride a cow to work and Alex Ferguson wouldn’t squabble with cider tycoons over the ownership of a gee-gee. Actually he would because he too is a genius in the business of football management and in exchange for that bedazzling gift we’ll tolerate his refusal to speak to the BBC, his hurling of boots at national treasures and his insistence on absolute authority at his club. But Abramovich wouldn’t tolerate that, which is why when Chelsea visit Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United tomorrow it’ll be under the stewardship of Avram Grant of whom I know little but suspect if Abramovich demanded his yacht play in goal and his wife on the wing would offer little resistance.
Like many a spurned lover before him Mourinho said he was going to take time off to unwind and wait for the phone to ring. I don’t imagine he’ll have long to wait till he gets optimistic tinklings from north and possibly east London and whatever he chooses to do I don’t suppose it’ll be long before he’s back at the Bridge with a new paramour and then I suspect it’ll be Abramovich who ends up heartbroken.
8 His Grace Arsène, the shaman of our football
‘I consider him a mystic, a shaman, an alchemist, speaking from somewhere far behind his inky eyes’
Six or seven games in we are able to ascertain the flavour of the season, we have savoured the first giddy sips and can now assess whether this shall be a vintage year. It’ll be some time till we rinse away the spectacular taste of that swoonsome, dark rascal José Mourinho, probably we’ll dispatch into the spittoon far sooner the bitter tang of Martin Jol, the poor sod, like a cuckolded father putting a brave face on for his bewildered kids, while Daniel Levy capers around Europe in a push-up bra with his knickers showing.
Fernando Torres is reckoned to be the new Ian Rush by Steven Gerrard and the arrival of the cartoonishly pretty Spaniard does seem significant. His input could ensure a realistic challenge from Merseyside for the first time in a decade-and-a-half and who but the blue faction of that city would begrudge them?
There is much to ponder in this richly evolving drama but my attention is drawn currently to Arsène Wenger, whose beautiful, more ‘royal’ than ever, Arsenal visit Upton Park tomorrow. Last season West Ham bested the Gunners twice, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated as Arsenal appear to have several teams playing with a grace, confidence and joy that is almost transcendental.
Given the concern that many expressed pre-season about post-Henry Arsenal this is a surprising and exciting development and one that can only really be attributed to Wenger, who to me seems to be vibrating above the frequency typically associated with our national game. I consider him a mystic, a shaman, an alchemist, speaking from somewhere far behind his inky eyes, issuing spiritual sermons on the game’s decline and our obligation to nurture English talent.
‘English football’s responsibility is to continue raising quality without losing its soul,’ he says, talking of foreign money and bare terraces as potential symbols of an atheistic erosion of our holy essence. Ten years ago Wenger came over here, taking our jobs, recruited a clutch of Gallics and Latinos and picked up the Double with the insouciance of a gent collecting a baguette and an espresso. The debate continues to this day as to whether the influx of foreign talent has harmed our national team; I feel that if the game is elevated and standards raised that will ultimately be positive across all strata and few would dispute the contribution made by ‘the professor’ unless they are actual racists or Spurs fans.
Now that Wenger has expressed concern about the development of young English players it does seem more serious. But aside from his new ecclesiastical role he has no duty to anyone other than the fans and board of Arsenal and that doesn’t run to positive discrimination in favour of Anglo-Saxons.
He spoke of fans as ‘the keepers of the game’ which is a further nod to the civic, if not sacred nature of the sport, which makes me query the new directive to referees to regard with renewed positivity ‘hard to call’ offside decisions, the reasoning being that ‘a dodgy goal is preferable to a dodgy offside’. Is that an edict with which most fans would concur? Obviously that would be contingent on whether it was scored or conceded.
For me the relative scarcity of goals, perhaps the factor that has prevented football enchanting America, enhances their sanctity. Gary Lineker and his sexy, brown legs would never put the ball in the net in a pre-match kick-about so as not to tarnish the magic of that rarely achieved objective and in midweek I saw, in a match against Real Zaragoza, that paragon of the footballer as divine, Thierry Henry, on sighting a raised flag, curtail his magisterial canter towards goal with the despondency of a man abruptly woken from a beautiful dream.
It was as if, in that moment, meaning itself had been suspended, the ball with trickling inertia departed from its master, who himself was left to wonder, when would come his first goal in La Liga. Amidst the swirl of the scandals, the rumours, the ignoble chatter and limitless tainted money something chaste and sacred remains and it belongs to us, the fans and cannot be bought, sold or branded. Wenger is aware of this, which is why one can overlook the paucity of Englishmen in his side; he could field a team of ravens and be closer to the game’s essence than most, and I hope, for West Ham’s sake, that tomorrow he does.
9 Whatever next? Joe Cole on stilts?
I’m in Tuscany. I’ve been sent here by my publishers to finish my autobiography. Usually, this column is the only writing obligation I have to fulfil and is rattishly indulged, today it must vie with literary