James Lawton: Mirror, mirror on the Stamford Bridge wall: Is 'the Special One' still on the ball?29 April 2005
His Lordship, the "Special One", has passed such tests before but maybe the title Jose Mourinho bestowed on himself is in need of its annual check-up.
Not for any central flaw, nor any possible dismissal of all that he has achieved; but being unique and brilliant and a little more rewarding each time you look into the mirror is something that has to be worked on day by day.
This carries us to the truth that Wednesday night's Champions' League semi-final at Stamford Bridge was not only about Liverpool glory and the tactical nous of their coach Rafael Benitez. It also had something to do with the fact that Mourinho and his team were a long way from masterful.
The killing judgement on his and his team's performance is simply not deflected by his quite reasonable claim that at least a shade of odds will still favour Chelsea when they go to an inflamed Anfield on Tuesday night. Whatever he says, Mourinho cannot obscure the fact that it would be infinitely better to have the cushion of at least one goal when he attempts to plot his way through the trial by emotion and compelling tradition that awaits him on Merseyside. Given this unnegotiable reality, the verdict on Chelsea in the final phase of the first leg cannot be anything other than damning.
Consider the facts: Liverpool, held together chiefly by the astonishing will and resilience of Jamie Carragher, were happy to stay on the ropes and wait for the chance to apply all available pressure at home. For Mourinho, the master strategist, the obligation was clear. He had to conspire with his players, the most willing in football, one final, biting assault. But what did he do? He finished with a long-ball assault, throwing in not just the striker he started with, Didier Drogba, but two more, the reassigned Eidur Gudjohnsen and the substitute Mateja Kezman. It is the kind of thing you expect to see on a bad day at Stockport, not in the home of the putative powerhouse of the European game.
Compounding Mourinho's distress - despite his laconic, philosophical performance in front of the television cameras later - was the fact that in its final re-organisation his team failed to produce a single threat to Jerzy Dudek. While Benitez prowled the technical area, reacting to almost every ball that was played, Mourinho, the activator, the self-proclaimed master of motivation, was strangely passive. Instead of strategy he came up with one of the great clichés of football, the last resort of long balls and crowded penalty areas. For Carragher's central defensive partner, Sami Hyypia, who had looked rattled several times in the early going, when Chelsea had a proper shape, it was a gift that came down from the heavens. He headed away a spate of long and optimistic balls. It is what he can do in his sleep. If Mourinho's life is, as he asserts, a movie, this was surely the point when the reel snapped.
The burning question now, with Milan looking less than awesome in the other semi-final despite holding a 2-0 advantage over PSV Eindhoven from the first leg at San Siro, is whether Mourinho can effect satisfactory repairs by next Tuesday night. There is one certainty. He will be helped immensely if Arjen Robben and Damien Duff are fit enough to start. For here we come to another question mark against the current standing of Mourinho's genius. It is that without these players - on Wednesday Robben was able to play only one half, the second, by which time Liverpool had already walked through the most critical storm and were set in their defiance - Chelsea are only half the team.
Joe Cole has emerged with much fanfare since the injury to Robben, but when it mattered most he was revealed as a slight substitute. Once, after leaving Hyypia so cold he must have been in danger of rigor mortis, Cole had the chance to move the ball swiftly to a point of maximum danger. Instead, he looked for the chance to display more trickery and Hyypia gratefully leapt back from the dead. Gudjohnsen held his head in dismay.
The hard conclusion is that between them Robben and Duff are more than a highly desirable presence. They are Chelsea's missing links when they cannot play, wide men of tremendous skill and penetration who compensate for a lack of true creativity in the midfield. They are Chelsea's attacking game.
Of course, Drogba has pace and skill (but a sadly failing scoring instinct) and Frank Lampard's aggressive spirit and, normally, fine scoring touch, are powerful assets. But they do not produce the pure penetration of Duff and Robben that utterly transformed the team earlier in the season when they forced out the relatively leaden Alexei Smertin and Geremi.
For Liverpool the loss of Xabi Alonso in the second leg because of a caution is huge. He didn't have one of his great passing performances on Wednesday - he seemed to be feeling the effects of his long lay-off - but he gave coherence, solidity and a wonderful awareness in front of the backline.
His yellow card was excessive punishment when measured against some of the unscrupulous work going on around him, and if Lampard, say, had been the victim we can easily imagine the reaction of Mourinho. It was to Benitez's great credit that he did not rail against the performance of the French referee Alain Sars, who apart from the Alonso incident gave most that was going to the home team. From Benitez, though, no sly questions about where Sars had his half-time cup of tea.
That, though, was quite typical of the Spaniard's style. He does his work, and he answers to himself.
So far he has not felt obliged to announce his own coronation as a "Special One", and no doubt he will resist the temptation if he should continue to beat the odds at Anfield.
For Mourinho perhaps the biggest challenge is for a moment or two of reflection. It should include recognition that there are heavy obligations placed on the "Special One". He must see that one of the most pressing of them is to do better than he did on Wednesday night.
29 April 2005 13:51
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