Call The Doctor

Jose Mourinho is sick. Read that sentence with whatever inflection best pleases you – your own take on the pliability of the English language may subconsciously reveal much about just how special you think The Special One really is.

Rarely has one man been so equally lusted after and despised (apart from David Cameron, apparently). Mourinho truly provides that rare, heady cocktail of desire and disgust. On the surface he's still the same old charmer he's always been – the brooding, exotic provocateur; a sharp mouth in an even sharper suit. He remains the pouting embodiment of an age-old maxim with a decidedly modern twist – women want to be with him; men want to be him, and can do so via the medium of Football Manager.

And as surely as the waves will rise and fall, so Jose will occupy our hearts and minds. He is the perpetual centre of attention, the spinning top that won't fall unless wrestled to the ground. I pretend not to care, but I do. I love his presence, but pine for the day his oligarch overlord sends him for the long walk once more. The press are as obsessed as before. My friends are too. He makes for great copy – reams and reams of copy (look, I'm adding more this very second!). He is, in the parlance of these lesser times, 'box office'.

But recently we've been offered a glimpse of something rotten at the core of the nation’s favourite exotic one-man show. The season's opening day saw Mourinho raging very publicly against his own medical stuff, who, as their match with Swansea drew to a close, rushed the pitch to help a stricken Eden Hazard. Despite learning post-match that referee Michael Oliver had waved his medics on to the field, Mourinho refused to move on, using the press to admonish his staff and subsequently exiling first team doctor Eva Carneiro and physiotherapist Jon Fearn to the stands for his side's ensuing ransacking at Manchester City eight days later. It's true that Mourinho has always trodden a fine line when in comes to matters of in-house discipline, at times almost daring his players to crack and break ranks. But there's something about his most recent fit of pique which has been bothering me, both as a football fan and on a more personal level too.

To begin with, the vitriol tossed at his own medical staff undermines a key component of his managerial armoury, one which, for me, always elevated him above his peers. As a Manchester United fan I naturally compare all mangers to Sir Alex Ferguson, for whom one particular aspect of his career always pleased me more than any other, namely his determination to defend his players in public. Whatever their discretions, Ferguson remained steadfast in his refusal to hang his players out to dry. Of course there were moments when things crept out of his control (David Beckham's infamous boot wound springs to mind) but when the narrative remained his to shape, he would keep things tightly scripted. When Eric Cantona picked a fight with a full back, or Roy Keane with an empty room, the message was always the same – we'll deal with it internally. The press and the public hated him for it, painting him as a myopic champion of a brand of ill-discipline which occasionally toppled over the line.

But that would be misreading the point. Fergie couldn't have cared less, because his determination to keep such matters in the bedroom – even if he'd privately decided to end the affair – did what he needed it to do: produce a winning team. This stance has admittedly been a little posthumously soured by subsequent autobiography 'revelations', but for Ferguson the job was done years ago. And the books wouldn't have made the shelves without him doing it pretty bloody well. Mourinho has – or perhaps 'had' – always been good at this style of man-management. There are many players out there who would happily give him five knuckles to the face if offered the chance, but there are at least as many more who would die for him. It's the latter which he keeps close; it's the latter for whom he professes undying love and defends to the hilt. It's the latter which keep him winning.

But the more nagging part of all this is decidedly closer to my heart. As someone responsible for a small but loyal band of employees, the very idea of feeding a member or two to the hounds after a (supposed) error would be viewed as an awful act of betrayal. It would undermine the trust of my staff and those who gave me such responsibility in the first place. Who would want to work for someone content to offer you up as a sacrifice? A vorarephile perhaps, but that's beside the point (editor's note: don't Google that at work. Or ever.)

I mentioned earlier how Mourinho is prone to pushing his players perilously close to the edge, attempting to provoke a positive response or a bite, which will either way tell him something about that player, however risky such a tactic might be. But non-playing staff are different. And whilst ignoring injuries is pretty trendy these days, Mourinho would do well to remember that these aren't gazillionaire playboys, pampered mega stars buying their agents Greek islands and strutting about the place like a cross between Thriller-era Michael Jackson and a randy bellboy. These are the unsung pillars of football clubs, the humble cogs in the machine, sheltering from the limelight amidst a choking cloud of Deep Heat and magic spray. These are highly qualified medical professionals; folk who have elected to spend their days massaging John Terry's groin so that we don't have to. These people deserve our respect. As someone who works alongside doctors and nurses every day, seeing a man in a position of such adoration calling medical professionals “naïve” for attending to an injured individual because it might hinder his team's chances of scoring strikes me as quite the galling act of hypocrisy. Better to be naïve to the ways of football than to the ways of human health, even if it might cost you two points. The sickness here is Jose's alone.

Perhaps Mourinho is again falling victim to his curious susceptibility to what we might term 'third season strain'. The third term of his first spell at Stamford Bridge was the only time he didn't bring home the title come May. He didn't make it to October. At Real Madrid his third and final season (which he entered as reigning champion, much as he does now) was a passive-aggressive clusterfuck of press baitings, club legend humiliations, face-pokings (not like that), and rumoured dressing room tête-à-têtes. At one point he even challenged the club's notoriously fickle supporters to love him more. That takes some ego. And the bigger they come, the more spectacularly they burst. He'd probably need a doctor for his.

~ Matt

@mattawaynow