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The story of Mourinho’s humiliating downfall at Chelsea

By on November 6, 2015

Jose Mourinho’s turmoil at Chelsea has been shocking not only in its scale, but also in its abruptness, following the club’s successful Premier League campaign last season. Yet even back in late April, before they had clinched the title, the signs were there, at least in hindsight. Since May 10th, when the club drew Liverpool 1-1, they’ve won just four of fifteen Premier League matches.

Our friends over on Reddit have pointed out one of these early warning signals. On April 28th, Chelsea scheduled a pre-season friendly with the New York Red Bulls in the International Champions Cup. Fast forward to July around two weeks before the friendly, when, due to the oddest of fixture mixups, the Red Bulls had to schedule a US Open Cup match with the Philadelphia Union just one day before meeting Chelsea. Due to the MLS Players’ Union, those who played against the Union — their starters — were ineligible to face Chelsea the following day, meaning that the Red Bulls featured their second side against a Chelsea team littered with starters, who each made many multiples of the Red Bulls’ entirely wage cap.

On that night in New York on July 22nd, the Red Bulls’ second team somehow defeated Chelsea 4-2 in the most surreal of matches. Chelsea were so obviously far superior from a talent perspective, but at the same time, so much worse in execution than the Red Bulls. Last week, the Times of London called the match the “beginning of the end” for Mourinho, who originally ignored the match in training, only to revisit the topic a few weeks later. John Terry certainly didn’t do himself any favors with a poor back-pass to aid the Red Bulls’ equalizer.

Chelsea scraped through the rest of preseason with two draws against Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona, but their problems resurfaced with a 1-0 loss to Arsenal in the Community Shield on August 2nd. Six days later and Chelsea drew 2-2 with Swansea City on the opening day of the Premier League season. That was also the day his saga regarding his treatment of club doctor Eva Carneiro sparked, casting him in a villainous light. A 3-0 loss to Manchester City and halftime substitution of Terry compounded his woes, before losses to Everton and Crystal Palace made it even worse.

As Chelsea’s woes worsened, the Carneiro saga raged in the background. Mourinho’s stubbornness and unwillingness to back down were frustrating from the point of the supporters, given his clear mistake. Moreover, his matchday antics hardly cast his character in a glowing light. On October 3rd, he was fined fifty thousand pounds and received a one-match stadium ban following a seven-minute rant on the referees after a defeat to Southampton and “challenged” Roman Abramovich to sack him. A rant in which he said: “because we are in such a bad moment, I think you shouldn’t be afraid to be also honest,” only to blame nearly everybody but show up for his own mistakes. Two weeks later he criticized his players’ work-rate and on October twenty-fourth, was sent to the stands after refusing to leave the referees alone at halftime of a 2-1 loss to West Ham United. He was fined and is serving a stadium ban for that incident as well.

Last week, Chelsea were knocked out of the FA Cup at Stoke and Mourinho has increasingly ostracized himself from the press and fans with defensive rants and shifty moods. After the Stoke defeat, he said: “My general situation is fantastic. I have a day off tomorrow, a fantastic family. I can sleep well every night. I’m going to enjoy my day and Thursday. It will be one more day like I have had in the last 15 years of my life – honest and dedicated.”

He has turned on many, many parties, including the club doctors (who informed the club they are attempting to seek a claim for constructive dismissal), fans, referees, and the press itself, with an infamous, unflattering interview following a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Liverpool on Halloween Saturday. In response to twelve questions, he said just forty-seven words — “no” and “I have nothing to say” on five occasions each.

As Chelsea’s form has gone downhill, Mourinho has become increasingly elusive in the public eye just honest managers should do the opposite. Other managers can yell at referees and criticize their players, but Mourinho has done it so many times that he is judged to tighter standards — both on the pitch and off it. Some say that he’s trying to get himself fired his antics have stooped so low; and if that were the case than it’s another skill he’s added to his resume.

His lack of humility is at times more appalling than Chelsea’s current form. It takes ego to be a Premier League manager, but while Jurgen Klopp terrorizes referees all day long, when the going got tough at Borussia Dortmund, he and his players owned up to their mistakes. Even after Dortmund’s lowest league finish in many years, he still departed the club on good terms. Louis van Gaal attracts his own fair deal of criticism for a large ego, but it was refreshing to see him stand in the way of his players over the last week as Manchester United fans have become impatient with their uninspiring form of late.

“I think the supporters have to support the players, otherwise they make it very difficult for the players to play at Old Trafford,” the manager said, per The Guardian. “Until now they were fantastic so I cannot complain about the fans. I can only advise the fans to criticise the manager and not the players. It’s very difficult to play for Manchester United with a lot of pressure and when you can taste that in Old Trafford because of all the yelling, then it’s not good for all my players.

“It’s better to whistle at the manager. I can cope with it because I have had a lot of experience in it in my life as a manager.”

It has been noted that they each might suffer undue criticism simply because they are foreign managers, but Mourinho has done himself no favors with the way he has responded. His is a “special” case, after all, as someone once mused.

Photo credit: By Aleksandr Osipov (José Mourinho) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.