How Mourinho is fine-tuning Real

Posted Thursday, June 16, 2011 by ESPN

How Mourinho is fine-tuning Real
Nuri Sahin is expected to help Real control games with more authority and boost the team's counter-attack.

Nuri Sahin, Altintop's Turkish international teammate, may have been the star for German champion Borussia Dortmund this past season, but he jumped ship, signing a six-year deal with Real in May. Blessed with considerable technical ability, the 22-year-old Sahin is the type of player for whom Mourinho has a particular plan in mind. Sahin is expected to put his stellar passing to use in a deeper role, allowing El Real to control games with more authority and to break with even more incision than before. His bargain 10 million euro price tag is just a further bonus.

We've seen this kind of team-building from Mourinho before. The Porto side he constructed to win dual domestic championships, the UEFA Cup and the Champions League was stuffed with talent, but it was also a functional beast, built to win. The likes of Deco and Maniche had the imagination to decide a game with a flash of magic, yet they understood that they had to provide industry, too. It is easy to forget that they were not glamor signings, but cheap castoffs.

Even Fabio Coentrao, the live-wire left back who is all but certain to arrive at Bernabeu Stadium from Benfica for a cool 30 million euros, is an altruist, a star who fully embraces the concept of the team. Converted after having been a winger earlier in his career, the 22-year-old thrives on being able to burst into his powerful wide runs from deeper positions, but he has learned the defensive side of his new position with astonishing speed, twin assets that make him the perfect amalgam of the two Real players currently sharing the role, Marcelo and Alvaro Arbeloa.

Of course, Coentrao's most eye-catching moments in the 2010 World Cup (in which he was one of the few Portugal players to emerge with increased stock) were in partnership with Cristiano Ronaldo on the left-hand channel, which is another boon for Mourinho.

The ability to link up with Ronaldo will also likely save Karim Benzema, the costly French international who many predicted to be one of the first casualties of the new Mourinho era. Benzema is being kept on not because Perez insists such a valuable asset must be nurtured (as may have been the case in the past), but because Benzema has a genuine worth to the team in providing a technical foil for Ronaldo. Benzema scored 26 goals in all competitions in his second season at the Bernabeu, but what really excites Mourinho are the Frenchman's nine assists (eight were for Ronaldo).

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