The two individual seasons, a decade apart, that Fabio Capello spent as manager of Real Madrid both ended with the La Liga crown sitting atop his team’s head.
Gary Johnson’s work in the Yeovil Town hot-seat might be carried out away from the glare which will train on Mourinho’s every turn, but it nevertheless provides a captivating argument that familiarity needn’t breed contempt.
Johnson left The Glovers in 2005 having been at the Huish Park helm for four years, during which time he took the club into the football league, and eventually into League One. After six years trying his hand – to mixed effect – elsewhere, the 57 year-old couldn’t resist the challenge presented by an attempt to better his previous work in Somerset.
Johnson has managed exactly that, guiding Yeovil into the Championship in his first full season back.
Ultimately, the prosperity of the next chapter of Mourinho’s Chelsea life will be dictated by forces not connected with the fact that he is operating on accustomed territory.
The key will be whether the inimitable Portuguese’s innate confidence has been eroded by his chastening final year in charge at the Bernabeu. A managerial career, which has been defined by the almost routine collection of the game’s blue ribbon prizes, suffered its first fork in the road last season. The unyielding dressing room harmony which Mourinho formed in his trophy winning teams at Porto, Chelsea, and Inter Milan, was alarmingly absent as his world fell apart at Madrid.
The famed man-management which is championed by Mourinho’s previous Chelsea class, most latterly by Frank Lampard in anticipation of the twice Premier League winning boss’ return, was not so well received by Real stalwarts. The influence of integral club-men, Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos, and Pepe, who all fell out with their manager, damaged irreparably the ‘all-for-one mentality’ which Mourinho values so dearly.
There is a palpable sense that Chelsea are appointing a more humble individual than the ‘Special One’ who arrived from Porto in 2004, still drinking in the first of his two Champions League triumphs which had been achieved a week earlier.
After Real were thumped 4-1 by Borussia Dortmund in last term’s Champions League semi-final first-leg, the defeated Mourinho admitted that ‘the best team won’, as well as hinting that his players had failed to implement a game-plan with regard to quelling the menace of four-goal Robert Lewandowski. The post-match musings of a tired looking man were conclusive evidence that his time in Spain was at an end.
Back in England, close to six years after he departed these shores, Mourinho instantly appears refreshed. He is speaking of beginning his work at Chelsea from ‘ground zero’, of ‘working hard again and building a different team from the team I built in the past’.
Mourinho returns to a very different club to that which he first joined. There is no longer any need to dust off the record books to discover when Chelsea were last champions of their country. They are recent European champions, and already boast a squad which contains a good deal of high quality players.
In 2004, Roman Abramovich needed a manager who had demonstrated an aptitude for taking a football club to new heights. The Russian now requires a boss with experience of taking over a club which demands trophies, and who is capable of moulding a group of exceptional individuals to meet extreme standards.
Competition for the limited prizes on offer at home and abroad is greater than ever. As was the case nine years ago, there can be no better man than a more rounded Mourinho to continue the Chelsea evolution – regardless of their previous infamously messy divorce.
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