SOCCER ANGLES:Success in football doesn't come cheap, as José Mourinho's many trophies testify, writes MICHAEL WALKER
APPARENTLY YOU can’t buy history. This is the latest gospel according to José Mourinho, who spent £130 million in his first two months at Chelsea in the summer of 2004. Nine months later Chelsea had won their first English league title in 50 years.
Mourinho has become a history manager.
At Chelsea, when he sanctioned a £24 million payment to Marseilles for Didier Drogba in June 2004, it eclipsed by £7 million the record amount Chelsea had previously paid, which was to Blackburn for Damien Duff. Soon that Drogba fee would be surpassed by the sum paid to AC Milan for Andriy Shevchenko. And so on.
From Chelsea, Mourinho went to Inter Milan, where he signed Wesley Sneijder, Samuel Eto’o, Diego Milito and in 2010 led them to a treble that included Serie A and the European Cup for the first time since 1965. History again.
The final against Bayern Munich was Mourinho’s last game as Inter manager. He moved to Real Madrid, who had made first Kaká, then Cristiano Ronaldo, the most expensive transfers of all time. Mourinho added the likes of Mesut Özil, Sami Khedira and €36 million on Benfica’s Ángel di María. In his second season Real won the league for the first time in four years.
After winning league titles in Portugal, England and Italy, Spain was the fourth country Mourinho’s management had conquered.
Even with some of the financial outlay for players, he is some man. His deeds at Porto alone confirm that.
So it is that the €37 million or so paid to Tottenham for Luka Modric last month looks like a detail in Mourinho’s career.
Or it does to him, when he looks at Manchester City.
When Mourinho looks at City – and he will see them up close at the Bernabéu on Tuesday night in a humdinger of a Champions League opener – what he should probably see is a light blue version of the Chelsea team he built. But what Mourinho says he sees is a club trying to buy a way to the top and manufacturing a history.
Given that City were formed 125 years ago as Ardwick FC, and first played in Europe in 1968 – and Mourinho knows it – this could seem a bit, well, rich.
But City can expect Real to lay out their nine European Cups as a marker of pedigree. Mancunians might just nip back that the last was in 2002. On top of that, when Mourinho moved to Inter, it was as successor to Roberto Mancini.
There are crunchy ingredients even before the champions of Germany and Holland, Borussia Dortmund and Ajax Amsterdam, are added to the group pot. Real are favourites to win the group but are they significantly better than City to warrant this status?
It is assumed Ronaldo will be inspired by the sight of sky-blue shirts in front of him, but his recent club behaviour has been peculiar. Or “sad”, as he put it.
It has been part of a collective humdrum – by their standards – beginning to the La Liga season. It started with a 1-1 draw against skint Valencia and then worsened with a 2-1 defeat at Getafe. Ronaldo played both of those 90 minutes.
Although in the third game of the league season Real won 3-0 at home to Granada, there were just under 60,000 in the Bernabéu, and they were watching the home team climb to ninth in the table. Barcelona, meanwhile, began with three straight victories under new manager Tito Vilanova, a man disparaged and physically abused by Mourinho last season.
They sit top.
Bearing in mind Mourinho signed a contract extension at the Bernabéu in May that keeps him at the hitherto volatile club until 2016, the boat is not rocking. That longevity at Real is another historic achievement.
But as he thinks of City and the continental profile of that game, tonight there is a trip to Sevilla that needs to yield a calming victory. Were Real to draw, for example, and Barcelona win at Getafe, the gap would be seven points.
There would be much talk of patience, understandably, and of a long way to go, but Mourinho would rather be in front.
That would hardly be a first for Mourinho, who at times last season seemed like another manager cramped by the pressure of Real Madrid.
The Vilanova incident was downright unpleasant; the magnanimity Mourinho displayed after losing the Champions League semi-final to Bayern Munich was impressive – unless you take the sceptical view that it was strategic.
That night in April, when Ronaldo and Kaká both missed penalties in the shoot-out at the Bernabéu, was one of those failures that people do not associate with the manager.
There was La Liga compensation to come, but it meant that, after successes with Porto and Inter Milan, Mourinho’s quest to make European history with Real Madrid was on hold. Now it resumes. As he will no doubt say, Manchester City represent a challenge off the pitch as well as on it.
Before he does so, Sevilla might just mutter it tonight about Real Madrid. In football, if you can afford it, everyone buys history.
Big spenders and a big bargain
Whatever happened to that Didier Drogba signed by José Mourinho? Well, after winning three league titles, four FA Cups and two League Cups with Chelsea, he rounded it off with a European Cup and almighty personal performances in the semi-final against Barcelona and the final against Bayern Munich, when Drogba’s 88th-minute equalising header was stunning.
But then, at the age of 34, he left for China to join his mate Nicolas Anelka at Shanghai Shenhua. Something appears to have gone wrong there, however, and there is speculation linking Drogba with a move back to England.
Judging by his excellence at the end of last season, Drogba would be as good a signing now (especially if free) as in 2004.
Are there many better strikers in the Champions League? One answer to that is: not at Arsenal.
Over in St Petersburg, though, they think they have a striker to match anything in Europe: Hulk. The most staggering transfers of the August window featured Hulk, of Porto, and Alex Witsel, of Benfica, moving to Zenit St Petersburg for €40 million each.
Zenit already have half the Russia team and now they have experienced attacking creativity and goalscoring to go with it.
Hulk is the cartoon-named Brazilian who can make things happen for himself. He is 26.
Witsel is a 23-year-old Belgian who was part of the Benfica team that eliminated Zenit in the last 16 of last season’s Champions League. His departure weakens Benfica, which will please Celtic.
But it strengthens Zenit, who begin this Champions League campaign in Malaga on Tuesday. Hulk and Witsel were due to make their Zenit league debuts last night. Investment, as José Mourinho knows, brings power, and Zenit have invested.
