Football clubs often affect a "way". Mostly it's a self-regard with little basis in match-to-match reality. But it remains an identity, something bigger than individual results. Manchester United famously had a 'way'. And now it doesn't. José Mourinho's appointment has binned that conceit forever, leaving some of us looking for the way out.
If there is one virtue to Mourinho’s appointment, it is straightforwardness. Putting the preening Portuguese in charge at the Theatre of Dreams is a straightforward acknowledgement that elite football really has become showbiz, plain and simple.
All those affectations about the game and social identity, about a club, and the way it plays, and what it represents, being part of something bigger than a mere team, have been reduced to branding.
That it has occurred just after Leicester City’s miraculous success, a success rooted in old-fashioned football virtues, is an irony that reinforces how advancement and improvement aren’t synonymous.
Mourinho is a wrong fit for United, or at least he should be, even if the ridiculous Eric Cantona says so too.
Not that it’s so wrong the world is going to stop. If sentiment is the only casualty, then the world will keep spinning just fine. But it is still dispiriting for those who believe sport without sentiment turns into little more than panto, something that clearly doesn’t matter at Old Trafford.
Mourinho’s CV indicates he will win trophies. An initial near-€200 million war chest will help.
Nostalgic memory
The form book also says Mourinho will then quickly move and do his shtick somewhere else for another two or three years, by which time the United ‘way’ will be just a nostalgic memory, sacrificed by a club that believes itself bigger than any one individual in order to lure one man who believes himself bigger than any club.
It used to be part of the United identity; no one was bigger than the institution. Not Best, Busby, Law, Keane, Cantona, no one.
Alex Ferguson, no shrinking violet in the ego department himself, prized control but behind the puce-faced bullying rage, it at least always appeared to be control for the purpose of making the club even greater.
Evidence abounds that Mourinho’s greatest purpose is always Mourinho.
Even at Real Madrid, it was always about José, playing the profile game with a panache he never allowed his fundamentalist teams to indulge in, creating the shamanic brand that United’s board have bought into with a fervour that has little to do with football and plenty to do with preserving corporate hide.
That the final stumbling block in negotiations reportedly came over image rights feels bang on the money. Six thousand tweets a minute were supposedly flying when Mourinho’s appointment was confirmed – SCORE.
And if that’s the new Man Utd way, you can keep it.
In actual football terms, there really used to be a United way: it didn’t always work, and it didn’t always happen, and the self-regard tied up in it could drive everyone else to distraction. But the aspiration was always there.
It wasn’t enough just to win, you had to try to do so with style, by expansive, attacking football. It was the Busby idea of fans on the terrace entertained by football that had dash, daring, and a touch of wit and ambition to go with the blood and guts. It had to at least try to be exciting.
That idea has been transferred down generations and accepted by Busby’s successors as part of the deal. There were barren years when the on-field talent wasn’t up to the task but the aim never flickered. And it continued to be a basic ethos throughout the Ferguson years.
Maybe the presence of Ferguson and Bobby Charlton will encourage Mourinho to go through PR motions about playing expansive football. It will be just spoof to a man for whom winning has always been enough, certainly enough to justify some of the loathsome behaviour which his apologists continue to condone on the basis of supposed charisma.
Devotion
Mourinho will no doubt produce reams of statistics about goals scored during his years at Porto, Chelsea, Inter and Real as supposed evidence of his devotion to entertainment. But his strengths as a coach have always been about functionality and work and defence which are vital elements to success but hardly constitute any ambition towards success with style.
It is another irony of United’s flailing attempts to fill the Ferguson void that they have replaced a man criticised for fielding teams that held on to the ball too much with one whose teams have always appeared strongest without the ball.
Mourinho isn’t alone in that. Leicester’s success is a case in point. So is Atlético Madrid’s. It’s easy to admire but hard to love since much of it is essentially negative. And the United way was always supposed to be about more than that.
It has always been a club that aspired to winning with exciting football, playing the right way, combining the aesthetic with effectiveness, and in the process providing itself with an identity that has captured the hearts of millions through generations.
Leave aside his dubious personal conduct and the constant need to be the centre of attention, there is zero chance of Mourinho changing the football habits of a lifetime, something the United authorities must know and which obviously doesn’t matter to them.
And that’s perhaps the most dispiriting part. That branding has trumped the ‘way’ that helped turn a football institution into a world brand in the first place. The ‘way’ has gone and like virginity it isn’t going to grow back. And all that’s left is just another team performing in English football’s theatre of the absurd.
