All the talk has been of the spirit of Juanito but Jose Mourinho was avoiding the ghosts of Real Madrid’s past. Madrid go into their Champions League semi-final second leg against Borussia Dortmund needing to overcome a 4-1 deficit amid a sea of motivational videos and lessons in history, the discourse centred on courage, heart and atmosphere, but Madrid’s manager preferred to focus on the thing that has been largely forgotten: the football.

Mourinho has stayed out of the club campaigns intended to heat up the atmosphere and although he attacked his team for playing the first leg “as if it was a friendly”, effectively demanding that they commit fouls at the Bernabeu, he shied away from the emotional storyline that has characterised the buildup to this game.

They call it a remontada – comeback – and it holds a special place in Madrid’s hearts. The words of the forward Juanito in April 1986 are now the stuff of legend. Madrid had been beaten 3-1 by Internazionale in the first leg of a Uefa Cup tie and afterwards Juanito warned Madrid’s opponents in cod Italian: “Noventi minuti en el Bernabeu son molto longo.” Ninety minutes in the Bernabeu are a very long time.

Whenever Madrid are up against it they invoke the spirit of a player whose words are given added symbolism because he died in a car crash in 1992. Madrid won the second leg 4-1.

Opponents came to the Bernabeu and panicked; an ambush awaited them, and it was loud and aggressive. Jorge Valdano called it “stage fright”. The flaw is that none came in the European Cup and it is almost three decades since the last remontada.

Real Madrid have prepared a video in the build-up to this game in which players appear telling the fans that they have a role to play. Players utter phrases such as “Your heart will be our heart”, and “Your strength is our strength”, but Mourinho does not appear. He seemed unimpressed with the initiative.

“I did not want to do the video because I think the best way to motivate the fans is with football,” he said.

Now Madrid have one more chance and so does the coach: if he is to depart at the end of the season, as is increasingly likely, this is a final opportunity to win the European Cup with Madrid. He, however, insisted that he still had "10 years" to try to win the trophy for a third time, and said that his future did not depend on the result. If Real get knocked out there will be more questions posed.

Coach's fault
"I know that when we win we all win but when we lose it is the coach's fault," he said, bitterly. Asked about reports that Madrid are negotiating with Carlo Ancelotti, he replied: "You have to ask Madrid and Ancelotti.

“I cannot put a percentage chance on it,” Mourinho said, “especially when the score is so imbalanced: when it’s like that, it is hard to use mathematics to justify claiming that you have a chance. It is only football and we’re 4-1 down. It is possible. But if we play like we did in Dortmund, forget it. I was not worried about how they felt after the game, I was worried about analysing that game.

“I named my team before the first leg because it was obvious. This time we might try different players and a different system so I won’t say. But I can tell you that Cristiano Ronaldo is fine. We will try to win and then see from there. We will go goal by goal and minute by minute. If we are 1-0 up we need two and if we are 2-1 up we need two as well.”

Franz Beckenbauer had alerted Bayern Munich to the fact that Barcelona would do all they could to turn round the other semi-final, “whether licit or illicit”, and Mourinho used that to have another dig at his rivals.

“I read someone say there are teams who use licit ways and illicit ways of winning,” he said. “I spoke about similar things two years ago and the world came crashing down on top of me. My team only does licit things. We’re so pure, so innocent, so naive that Lewandowski scored four and we didn’t commit a single foul on him. We have to try to win the game. I want intensity and aggression.”

Asked to clarify that point, Mourinho said: "In five minutes Ronaldo has been fouled four times. I'm not saying I want to foul him but I want concentration, intensity, aggression. We played like it was a friendly. But none of the players abandoned ship and that gives me hope that we can turn it round."
Guardian service