José Mourinho aims to smash down Real Madrid's European barrier - 7M sport

José Mourinho aims to smash down Real Madrid's European barrier



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Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2011 by theguardian.com

Real Madrid face Lyon on Tuesday night knowing they have not got past the last-16 stage of the Champions League since 2004

José Mourinho aims to smash down Real Madrid's European barrier
Real Madrid coach José Mourinho is under pressure to deliver Champions League success to the Spanish club.

Others have been sacked for less. Lesser men have been sacked for more. But José Mourinho is different. Special. Tonight will go a long way to discovering just how different when his Real Madrid team face Lyon and attempt to succeed where others have failed, and failed consistently. As Mourinho put it, Madrid have "two obstacles: beating Lyon and getting beyond this round." They face the team that eliminated them last year, making it six consecutive seasons without getting through a single Champions League knockout tie.

It was that, above all else, which made Madrid turn to the Portuguese. This is a game charged with emotional significance. It appears as an impossible frontier. Mourinho appears as the man who can guide them across the border. As he noted, "psychologically, this is not negative for everyone. I have knocked Lyon out before, with Porto. So has [Ricardo] Carvalho and Cristiano [Ronaldo]. Besides, the records are there to be broken. They are the past: this is now."

Not just now. After a very public "war" with the director general Jorge Valdano, the man who is theoretically Mourinho's boss, tonight will go some way to define the future for coach and club. Win, progress, and peace will ensue; defeat will exacerbate already simmering tensions.

Mourinho may have been quick to insist that he has not done anything different for this game, but asked about his starting line-up, in which he is expected to go for a three-man defensive midfield, he revealed much in revealing nothing. "Normally, I am happy to tell you about my team," he said, "but not tonight. What you want to know, [Lyon coach] Claude Puel also wants to know, so I'm not saying anything."

For Mourinho, this matters: he has already picked himself up from one tumble in a way that others have been unable. Fall here and getting up might prove rather harder.

On the night his team celebrated the 2002-2003 league title, Vicente del Bosque was told that he would not continue as Real Madrid coach. He had won two league titles and two European Cups in four years. The five men who followed him won nothing. The sixth, Fabio Capello, won the 2006-07 league title but was sacked. Bernd Schuster followed and won the league in 2007-08 but failed in Europe and was fired early the following season for announcing that it was impossible for Madrid to win at the Camp Nou.

Juande Ramos proved him right, losing twice to Barcelona. In between times, his domestic record read: played 17, won 16, drawn 1. Last season, Ramos's replacement Manuel Pellegrini broke a historic points record and his team scored 102 league goals. But he lost twice to Barcelona – 1-0 at the Camp Nou, 2-0 at the Bernabéu – and was sacked. "They have spent hundreds of millions on players and Mourinho to beat Barcelona," said Juande Ramos. "After all, Pellegrini and I were already beating the rest."

Ramos was only half right. Mourinho talked of two obstacles. He could have talked of three: against Barcelona in November, his Madrid fell 5-0. As Xavi Hernández recalls it, Madrid barely touched the ball. Mourinho described it as a "historically bad night". Ramos had been beaten with a side weakened by injury, Pellegrini had lost a tight match 1-0. Mourinho had been slaughtered. But nothing happened.

Juande Ramos once observed: "It's useful to have a coach around at Real Madrid – as someone to burn." Not this time. This time, for the first time, the galáctico was the coach, afforded protection and believed in. Powerful. There was no campaign to have him removed and comparatively little backlash. Even when they lost to Osasuna recently, there was no "The End", no desire to drive him out as there had been with other coaches. Marca's cover simply noted the need to focus on the cups.

The European Cup above all. Madrid are obsessed with status. The president, Florentino Pérez, talks consistently of returning Madrid to their "rightful place", by which he means at the centre of international football's attention. Madrid are deeply proud of having been named the twentieth-century's best club. Mourinho last night described them as the "champion of champions". "We are," he said simply, "Real Madrid."

That status comes not from their 31 league titles, although they help, but from their nine European Cups. This is the tournament with which they consider themselves synonymous. Every season starts with a quest for the décima; every win is a step towards it. You do not even need to name the trophy, a simple "the 10th" will do.

The trouble is, it is almost a decade since they won it. Worse, it is six years since they even advanced in a knock-out round. By Madrid's own measure, and this is the yardstick they believe in most, the biggest club of them all is not a big club at all. This is their territory but they no longer dominate it. Mourinho does. On the day that Mourinho signed his contract with Real Madrid, he took a stroll round the stadium with the president. When they passed the European Cups, Pérez remarked: "I miss it." Mourinho replied: "I miss it too and it's only a few days since I won it."

Mourinho's European Cup success with Inter – one that, better still, he had won by defeating Barcelona on route – made for the perfect CV. The perfect promise. He arrived with the trophy under his arm; their trophy. By bringing him in, Madrid almost appropriated the cup he'd won in their stadium. Desperation drove them into his arms. No one could better guarantee European success than Mourinho. Madrid, meanwhile, offered Mourinho the opportunity to complete the collection: he has won the European Cup with two different clubs having also triumphed with Porto in 2004. No one has ever won it with three.

And although Mourinho has noted lately that his sides won the competition in his second season, he is quick to talk of a Real team that is not yet "complete", progress in this competition is the real measure of progress. Madrid can fail to win the European Cup but they cannot continue failing to win in the European Cup. Madrid supporters used to call themselves Vikings because of the way they marauded around the continent. Mourinho's task is to ensure they do again.

"I have been waiting for this since the day of the draw," he said. So has everyone else. Yes, Madrid were defeated by Barcelona – and more heavily than other Madrid teams – but Europe is Madrid territory. It is Mourinho territory too. Madrid may not have reached the quarter-finals in six years but Mourinho is the current holder and with a side that had even greater obstacles to overcome. "When I got to Real Madrid they were faced by a six-year barrier," he smiled. "When I got to Inter, we were faced by a fifty-year barrier." Everyone knows how that turned out. And Real Madrid know it best of all.



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