Maureen Rent-a-Quote

It's just comedy gold seeing Mourinho wind you all up so easy
--

Doesn't wind me up anywhere near as much as when he was at the club I support. It also helps he's in another country. Still can't stand his being anywhere near the sport I love though.

universally regarded as a failure and classless in Spain.
He did achieve the unusual feat of being disliked by Barca fans and Real fans in equal measure which is some achievement.

^

totally true I am afraid. I know loads of Madrid fans and they hate him. They think he ruined the clubs "good" name. Some of his antics here were simply atrocious. He never won over the dressing room and without that he was doomed.
Kind of ironic when you think Mou's chelsea team have been instrumental in ousting several post Mourinho managers.

I have always had questions over his long-term sustainability regardless of his success.

Madrid's appointment of Mourinho just typified the short-term minded approach Perez has had to success, whereas the man they got rid of, Pellegrini, would have made a great manager had he been afforded the conditions necessary by Perez and Marca.

yet he beat the greatest team in football history to the title

no other manager could have done that

admittedly he is a complete tw3t.

Barcelona got 91pts that season, a total bettered by Madrid in the previous two seasons in which they never won the title.

It does take a big effort to reach 92pts, but I'm sure more managers could have achieved it- indeed Pellegrini himself managed to do so when he got 96pts.

Those who do not rate Jose as a manager but be really really really dumb.

Those who don't like his character, have a right to their opinion but lets be honest no one is telling you to marry him. I dont really understand when FOOTBALL fans start debating the moral conduct of anyone we should really just talk about FOOTBALL as we are fans of FOOTBALL on a FOOTBALL forum.

KotB, you couldn't be more mistaken. The man's character -or at the very least his football persona- has a huge bearing on his management style, and in Madrid's particular case there couldn't have been a worse choice for the job than Mourinho. Henrik on the other hand is pretty much spot on with his comments. Pellegrini was the ideal man for the job, but Pérez again failed to see this, and was very ill-advised by the then editor of Marca, a true snake who no doubt had his own paper-selling interests in mind, not the club's.

I get the impression Mourinho thought he understood the Madrid-Barça rivalry on the back of the years he spent in Barcelona, but he was grossly mistaken. The rivalry between both clubs has always been very asymmetrical, and Madrid's role had never been to play the victims. Doing so was never going to go down well with the majority of the club's long-time fans or with the players who understood the nature of the club.

In addition, he didn't seem to be aware of the fact that the vast majority of Madrid socios are almost by definition die-hard Spain fans, so the approach taken to the Barça rivalry was never going to be tolerated to the point of causing a rift in the national side precisely in its most glorious era.

Add that the playing style he favours was also contrary to the one the club has traditionally deployed, and it was never going to work in the long run.

These are just the course details. If I had to explain all of the finer points I'd probably have to write a book on the subject.

Estoy totalmente de acuerdo contigo.