It took about 10 minutes for the shine to go off the new season for Spurs. Everton midfielders who had only been introduced to each other last week were dominating the ball as though they had been playing together for years. Tottenham, most of whose players really have been playing together for years, looked as though they had no idea how to get the ball back.
At the end, as Everton congratulated each other on a well-deserved win, their first against Spurs since David Moyes was their manager, the Sky presenter David Jones suggested that it would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall of the Tottenham dressing room for the post-match debrief.
Jones seemed to be winking towards the recent Amazon documentary on Spurs, but if he still thinks it would be fascinating to hear what Mourinho has to say in such moments, it sounds like he hasn't had time to watch any of the show.
Mourinho's usual thing is to moan at his players for failing to notice some small yet crucial opportunity for gamesmanship. On this occasion you could imagine someone would be getting it for not seeing Lucas Digne move the ball forward a few yards before taking the free-kick that led to Dominic Calvert-Lewin's winning header. Those are the details, in Mourinho's understanding of football, that make the difference between winners and losers.
Apparently he told Amazon he didn’t want them filming his tactical work: of course not, he wants them to show his best side.
“You have to be a bunch of c*nts,” the £15 million-a-year coach told his players, condensing his philosophy into a single line in what will surely be the documentary’s defining sequence.
This is the kind of team he wants: relentlessly obnoxious, cynically feigning indignation, always on the look out for some fake outrage that can be exploited to provoke the opponent or put pressure on the ref.
No wonder his teams all seem to forget how to play football after a while when their leader is so obsessed with essentially irrelevant mind games.
If you’re trying to encourage creativity then the sort of aggressive paranoia Mourinho demands is precisely the wrong state of mind.
Flashes of temper
His players are not stupid, they understand what is required of them and already are dutifully inhabiting their roles.
In the build-up to Sunday’s game Heung-Min Son did an interview on CGTN, the English-language Chinese state TV news channel, who asked him about the occasional flashes of temper he has displayed on the field (he was sent off twice last season).
“I don’t want to lose. As a football player, who wants to lose? Of course I try to be a gentleman, I try to be a good guy off the pitch – but on the pitch I can’t be a good guy. People are laughing at me. I want to be a tough guy . . . because playing is for winning. This is what the gaffer says, good guys never win. So we have to be sometimes really tough guys.”
It was sad to see Son having to parrot this nonsense. If his gaffer insists that good guys never win, how does he explain Carlo Ancelotti? He’s won five European Cups, he’s a league champion with five different clubs in four countries, and you can hardly find anyone with a bad word to say about him.
It felt like more than just another false dawn for Everton
Everton finished 10 points behind Tottenham last season, but based on the performance of Ancelotti’s new-look midfield, they’ll be unlucky to finish behind Spurs again.
James Rodriguez produced delivery of a precision that will create chances against any defence. Richarlison was caught out by the quality of one deep cross that dropped perfectly for him at the far post, clearing the head of the last defender by about an inch and a half. He missed that chance but he'll be expecting the next one.
James is not going to run around much off the ball, but that’s what they bought Allan for. It felt like more than just another false dawn for Everton, and their fans must be keener than almost anyone’s to get back in the stadium and show this developing team some appreciation.
It must have been a satisfying afternoon all round for Everton's captain Séamus Coleman, who was coming up against the man who is currently keeping him out of the Republic of Ireland team. Coleman was quietly competent throughout, while Matt Doherty, until his substitution with 15 minutes to go, was arguably the key player in Spurs' system, such as it was.
Responsibility
Mourinho’s lopsided set-up gives Doherty a lot of responsibility. When Spurs get the ball his job is to get forward into attack while the left back tucks into a back three. Often they will try to hit him with long passes forward, and Mourinho bought Doherty because he is powerful and aggressive enough to compete for those diagonal balls with anyone.
But pushing up so high means Doherty will occasionally leave his centre-back exposed, as happened when Richarlison got in past Alderweireld for a glorious early chance.
It’s more difficult than what he had to do at Wolves, playing wing-back in a 3-4-3, with more cover in defence and more support in attack. He must now quickly adapt to the demands of the new position, while Mourinho stalks about the training ground, whipping his ailing, losing players into line with those world famous confrontational leadership techniques. These next few weeks at Spurs might not be much fun.
As for Coleman, who became a laughing stock among Everton fans last season for all the times he found himself in front of TV cameras repeating the phrase “not good enough” following embarrassing defeats.
He has held on to his place in what looks a genuinely exciting new team, and it is now his happy task to pass the ball to Rodriguez and make himself available on the overlap. Since his bad injury in 2017 it’s often felt like not much has gone Coleman’s way, but it’s a long road that has no turning.
