Poor results on the pitch reflected the Portuguese’s increasingly fractious relationships off it, and it seems to be happening again at Manchester United

Real Madrid 2010-2013: Backroom discord and media paranoia

On the day José Mourinho was presented to the media on his return to Chelsea, he described himself as “the happy one”. It was a pointed remark: in Spain he hadn’t been, not for a long time. His departure, after three years, was overdue and few at Real Madrid fought to keep him – not even those who thought he was in the right and that they might miss him. Mourinho could not go on and nor could the club. His situation had become unsustainable, summed up in a comment made in 2013, towards the end of his third season: “I want to be where people love me.”

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That night Madrid had been knocked out of the Champions League, defeated 4-1 in Dortmund and unable to turn it around in the second leg. They had long since seen the league disappear from their grasp, ultimately finishing 15 points behind Barcelona in La Liga. And in the Copa del Rey final they were defeated at home by their city rivals Atlético Madrid.

By full time Mourinho had gone, sent off. It had felt staged, sought. As his assistant manager Aitor Karanka went up with the team to collect Real’s runners-up medals, the king of Spain looked at Karanka and asked: “Do I give it to this guy?” Mourinho described it as the worst season of his career. Three days later, he had left the club.

The relationship with the dressing room was broken – he had fallen out with Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos, Pepe, Ronaldo and more – and with the media he was surly, challenging and dismissive, when he appeared at all, often sending Karanka in his place. Mourinho thought they were out to get him – and he wasn’t always wrong. Most had turned on him. The fans had become divided. Some whistled him. Even those who defended him – and on the final day the ultras handed him a plaque showing their gratitude for his attempts to change the culture at the club – knew that he could not continue.

“I know that in England I am loved by the fans and by the media, which treats me in a fair way,” he said. The “unlike here” went without saying but that opinion did not last long. Something of Spain went with him; he was not the same any more, despite the temporary release of a return to England.

Asked if he had considered leaving towards the end of the third season, Mourinho replied tellingly: “I have considered staying.” It was a threat. Confrontation was constant, the sense of bitterness and sadness intense. Bluntly, it had become unpleasant, nasty, and the spark had gone.

Mourinho became withdrawn, barely talking to some players, whom he considered disloyal and, in some cases, unprofessional. He played the political game, of course, but could not control it. Nor could he entirely control talented rivals, although Madrid certainly competed with Barcelona. Defeat damaged him, too. “Something terrible happened: he became infallible,” said Jorge Valdano, sporting director when Mourinho arrived. In 2011 Valdano was forced out of Real, the loser in a civil war with the coach.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Despite the smiles at the 2012 Real Madrid Christmas portrait session, José Mourinho had high-profile fallings out with Iker Casillas (left) Sergio Ramos (centre), Pepe and Cristiano Ronaldo. Photograph: Angel Martinez/Real Madrid via Getty Images

That was not the only battle. Mourinho and his staff cornered one reporter, alone, by the press room and confronted him, insisting there were “black sheep in the squad”. He made no secret of his hatred for Casillas, a very public falling-out. Pepe had missed the cup final, dismissed after he suggested that the manager show the goalkeeper, the club captain, more respect.

But if there is such a thing as a third-season syndrome – and some of the parallels are striking – this was not exactly the same as, say, Chelsea. Mourinho saw the season through to the end, he was not sacked sooner, and the splits were not reduced to that season: they had been seen earlier and it was not so much that they were more intense that season as irreversible.

Jerzy Dudek recalled him throwing a bottle at the dressing room in the first campaign, shouting at his squad and vowing to find the “rat” who talked to the press. He complained that he had been “stabbed in the back”. The Pole recalled how the goalkeeping coach told him it had “left a scar on his soul” and that feels like a lasting one.

Yet he did win the title in the second year, with record figures. He always felt that success did not get recognised and nor did Madrid’s improvement in Europe. Three semi-final defeats, while better than the club had managed since 2003, was not good enough.

The last was a season too far: the previous summer, he had already tried to seek a way out, hoping he would get the Manchester United job. He didn’t. Chelsea didn’t happen either, not yet. Instead, he renewed his contract, four more years when he no longer wanted to be at the Bernabéu for one. Increasingly, it showed. By the end, it was inescapable. Another year was impossible; a third was bad enough. Sid Lowe

Chelsea 2013-15: The title, then – 227 days later – the door

It was the speed at the unravelling of José Mourinho’s second coming at Chelsea that took the breath away. His previous divorce from the club had been telegraphed through a year of political grumbling before the axe inevitably fell a month into his fourth campaign. Yet this time, there were only 227 days between the Portuguese witnessing his side claim the Premier League title in May 2015 and, having been summoned from the staff’s Christmas lunch in mid-December, the 10-minute meeting with the director Eugene Tenenbaum and the chairman, Bruce Buck, at Cobham to confirm he was to leave the club where he was feted most of all.

So much of the intervening seven months had been fraught. Transfer business that summer had been uninspiring, the board apparently more inclined to flesh out the squad with youthful potential (and Papy Djilobodji) until Pedro’s arrival from Barcelona. Mourinho had stressed the need for greater depth in quality, having instigated a more pragmatic style of play since the turn of the year as he sought to edge Chelsea over the line. His squad ended their title-winning campaign exhausted, with the head coach duly delaying their return for pre-season. That might have been necessary but it left them playing catch-up from the outset.

Regardless, Mourinho was already unimpressed with recruitment and his downbeat, grumpy mood set the tone. The outbursts were wild, the manager lashing out as if convinced the world was suddenly conspiring against him.

They were directed inexcusably at the medical staff on a difficult opening afternoon against Swansea – the subsequent legal dispute with Dr Eva Carneiro would rumble on long after his departure – and would persist against television pundits and, most regularly, officialdom.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest José Mourinho was furious at Chelsea’s club doctor Eva Carneiro (second right) running on to treat Eden Hazard late on in a draw against Swansea. Photograph: Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images

He suggested referees were “afraid” to award his Chelsea side decisions. With his appeal against the resulting Football Association charge still to be heard, he was sent to the stands at West Ham after confronting Jon Moss in the officials’ room at half-time and banned from attending a loss at Stoke. His cumulative fines would total £141,000 over his second spell in charge by the time he left the club before Christmas.

His livid accusations added to the sense of panic that gripped tighter with each spluttering performance mustered by his team out on the pitch. Maybe his players had tired of his training methods, or of the grinding style to which he had resorted, but nothing Mourinho tried – be it carrot or stick – succeeded in coaxing consistent performances from a collective shorn of confidence. They lost three of their first five league games. Even their aura of invincibility at home had been replaced overnight by choking apprehension.

When Southampton won 3-1 at Stamford Bridge in early October, confirming the club’s worst start to a season in 37 years, Mourinho in effect challenged the board to sack him. Roman Abramovich, who had secured the Portuguese with a new four-year contract that summer, was present that afternoon to witness the loss.

“No way I resign,” said Mourinho. “If the club want to sack me, they have to sack me because I am not running away from my responsibility. This is a crucial moment in the history of this club because, if the club sack me, they sack the best manager this club ever had. And the message again is that if there are bad results, the manager is guilty.”

That actually prompted an unprecedented vote of confidence from the hierarchy, a 57-word statement pledging Mourinho their “full support” and arguing they had “the right manager to turn this season around”.

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Yet he had never previously been in this position and, with a disaffected squad crammed with key players horribly out of form, results did not improve. If anything, they deteriorated further, prompting the owner and his staff to scrutinise the schism developing between coach and squad. The technical director, Michael Emenalo, would later cite “palpable discord” as justification for the board’s change of heart.

By the time Chelsea were beaten 2-1 by Leicester in mid‑December, a ninth league defeat of the season to leave them a point above the relegation zone, Mourinho looked broken. He wondered out loud post-match whether the previous season’s success had actually been the blip, rather than the team’s current malaise, and suggested his work on the training pitch had been “betrayed”. His methods simply were not getting through. When the time came to pull him out of the Christmas lunch, confirmation must almost have felt like a relief. Dominic Fifield