More Than 90 Minutes (eBook)

Toward the end of his first spell at Chelsea, José Mourinho had produced a side that had gradually become more solid and more compact. This was due in no small part to the arrival of men who helped make his tactical provisions a reality. With Michael Essien and Michael Ballack in the midfield and Didier Drogba as center forward, Mourinho changed his ideas to the point where he played with just one forward, which didn’t go too badly for him because the Ivory Coast striker was able to cope all on his own leading the line.

Signing Andriy Shevchenko seemed to mean Mourinho would be compelled to play with two up front, but the poor form the Ukrainian was in made him stick to 4–4–1–1, with Joe Cole fulfilling a mixed role, although largely with midfield responsibilities.

The great goal-scoring threat of Frank Lampard, not to mention that of Ballack, contributed greatly to the success of that system, as the solidity of the midfield and the colossal defense starring John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho, and Petr Cech meant that Chelsea often only needed one goal to win all three points.

Indeed, it was the arrival of Essien, and subsequently of Ballack, that threatened to undermine Lampard’s great box-to-box prowess.

In the 2003-2004 season, when Chelsea reached the Champions League semi-final, winning at Highbury against the Arsenal Invincibles, Lampard had one of the best seasons of any player that decade.

At that time, the manager was Claudio Ranieri. He allowed Lampard to cover an enormous amount of ground to both recover and distribute the ball, which was key to his fantastic play that year. Ranieri’s Chelsea had a phenomenal season and missed out on winning the league because Arsène Wenger’s Invincibles played football from another planet and were just that—invincible.

Lampard needed that huge area to express himself fully on the pitch. It may seem illogical, but with a smaller area to play in, he would lose some of his impact.

The arrival of Mourinho—who didn’t have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Ranieri’s Chelsea—and the Abramovich signings, Essien among them, restricted Lampard’s space; he began to lose his place in the midfield and had to start to adapt in order to continue to play a key role.

In several Champions League games in the 2006–2007 season, Mourinho played Makelele, Lampard, Ballack, Essien, Drogba, and Shevchenko. A team that was impossible to get through, but with a midfield so heavily populated with players with similar characteristics that the speed down the wings offered by Arjen Robben and Shaun Wright-Phillips wasn’t exploited. This had the effect of diminishing the usefulness of a player like Lampard, as he played his best football when he had a lot of space around him.

That transformation in Chelsea’s style of play impacted negatively on their own performances because with a less densely populated midfield they won two consecutive league titles, but then they declined sharply. It wasn’t until Carlo Ancelotti’s arrival that they became champions of England again.

A perfect example of how it’s possible to defend with attackers and do it well is the Manchester United-Chelsea game played on January 11, 2009, when Luiz Felipe Scolari hadn’t yet been replaced with Guus Hiddink. On that occasion at Old Trafford, Scolari played John Obi Mikel, Lampard, Ballack, and Deco in midfield, while Ferguson just gave Darren Fletcher the more defensive duties, with Ryan Giggs next to him, Ronaldo and Park Ji-sung on the wings, and Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov up front. Result: Manchester United barely broke a sweat all afternoon, created endless opportunities, and ran out convincing 3-0 winners, marking the start of their final push to displace Chelsea and Liverpool at the top of the league and win their third title in a row.

A few months later in Milan, a similar tactical revolution took place that achieved even greater results. The man behind it, surprisingly enough, was none other than Mourinho himself; the same Mourinho who at Chelsea had decided to increase the number of midfielders and build a football team based on fewer natural attackers had now decided to try a completely different tack.

At the start of the 2009 -2010 season—his second at the San Siro—Mourinho used Samuel Eto’o as a lone striker against Dynamo Kiev in the group stage of the Champions League, which suggested a return to his old Chelsea ways. Fortunately for Inter and for world football, that match ended in a 2-2 draw, and Mourinho realized that formation wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go.

The presence of one of the best forwards in the world such as Eto’o and the tremendous form Diego Milito was in forced Mourinho to be more conventional and put them both up front. When he saw the number of goals that strike pair produced, he kept them as his main offensive weapon, although we may wonder just how carefully he had to consider it.

But the biggest change in Mourinho’s mentality came in the Champions League last sixteen match against Chelsea. If at the same point the previous year against Manchester United he wanted to play chess rather than football and clung to an overly cautious formation, now Mourinho started the first leg with Eto’o, Milito, and another of the new ever-presents, Wesley Sneijder. He surprised half the watching world and showed that you can learn from your knocks and knockouts.

After just three minutes, Inter was up 1- 0; they kept attacking Chelsea and after half-time, with Inter ahead 2-1, he realized that that score line left them vulnerable for the return leg at Stamford Bridge, so after thirteen minutes of the second half he replaced Thiago Motta with Mario Balotelli. In other words, he ended up playing with Sneijder and three forwards.

Although the score didn’t change, that doesn’t detract from the excellent football displayed by Inter or, in particular, the evolution in thinking of the hereto quite rigid Mourinho.

In the return leg in London, he continued with his revolutionary formation and started with Sneijder, Goran Pandev, Milito, and Eto’o. He came out with all guns blazing, forcing Chelsea to go in search of goals but at the same time take great care in defense, things that can’t always be successfully combined. That game showed how football is sometimes like a small blanket; if you cover your feet, your head sticks out, and vice versa.

The pressure on the Chelsea back line was so great that they found it difficult to attack in sufficient numbers to penetrate a very solid Inter defense led by an excellent Lúcio. The game was very even with two well-matched teams. Mourinho knew he was playing against a great team and that there was a real chance of being knocked out, but the best way to leave Stamford Bridge alive was to attack without fear.

And that’s what they did. They attacked their opponent and avoided being attacked. They didn’t concede, and when Carlo Ancelotti decided he needed to make a couple of changes, which weakened his defense, Eto’o scored to decide the tie.

Bad luck for Chelsea; they got a hard draw against a team who played even harder and who lost the tag of European lightweights. Mourinho took Inter Milan to the quarter-final with a masterful display of football, just as Guus Hiddink’s Chelsea had done a year before against Liverpool.

The games against CSKA in the quarter-final allowed him a breather before facing what was to come in the semi-final: Barcelona. Here he produced another shock and qualified for the final and a trophy for which Inter had been yearning since 1965.

In the first leg, played at home, Mourinho kept his ultra-attacking formation and got a scarcely imaginable 3-1 victory, giving him a huge cushion for the return leg. Not many teams in the previous two seasons had managed to win by that score against a Barça who the previous year had won the treble, much less come back from a goal down to do so. In the return leg, Mourinho was about to employ the same starting eleven, but Pandev got injured during the warm-up, so Mourinho decided to use Christian Chivu as left back and move Javier Zanetti into a three-man midfield alongside Thiago Motta and Esteban Cambiasso. He could afford the luxury of doing this because it didn’t suit him to go toe to toe with a Barcelona side who would be going all out for the two goals they needed to reach the final.

After twenty-eight minutes, the game changed dramatically with the unfair dismissal of Motta, and Inter had no choice but to batten down the hatches in their own area to weather the storm.

And they managed it. Barça’s only goal came in the eighty-third minute, and although Bojan Krkić had two golden opportunities to decide the tie—one missed header and another which was disallowed for offside—that second goal never arrived.

When the final whistle went, Mourinho ran toward the pitch and stood before the Camp Nou in one of the most defiant poses ever seen on a football pitch, which...