José Mourinho had already done the por qué?, the printout and the press conference no-show in under 100 days. Now he’s done a knee slide too, and in the perfect place: back where it all began and where it can all begin again. When Kylian Mbappé scored the first in the clásico on Sunday night, Real Madrid’s manager hardly moved, sitting in the shadow of the bench, but when the striker got the second to win it with time running out, that was different.
Mourinho leapt into the light, throwing himself to the grass, the knees of a 63-year-old’s trousers muddy as a schoolboy’s, stuck his tongue out and pumped his fists. He does so love it when a plan comes together. To the right of him, the bench was emptying, subs joining the players in sprinting towards the south-west corner.
As they leapt about, dodging the bottles thrown towards them from the end, way, way up in the furthest corner and stuck inside a glass box like a bunch of David Blaines, the small group of Madrid fans who had come were going mad. In the main stand, a thousand phones were raised. And 600km west, back in Boadilla, Thibaut Courtois was watching his teammates from the sofa at home, presumably wrapped in a blanket and cradling a cup of Lemsip.
On the morning of the biggest game there is, he awoke with flu, forced to miss out. Plenty might have felt like it, more reason to be fearful. But the coach called Andriy Lunin, the sub goalkeeper so serious he bought a roll of astroturf and spent the pandemic diving round the living room of his flat, and told him this was his moment: “You train to play, not to sit on the bench, so go on.” As for the rest of them, the manager told them nothing changes: the plan remains in place.
By the time they headed back to the dressing room, “Fucking get in!” echoing along the Camp Nou corridor, so it had proved. Thirteen years later, Mourinho was back in Barcelona for a clásico and he had guided Madrid to a 2-1 win. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, or maybe it was.
Barcelona, the team who had won nine in a row, banging in 4.3 goals per game, had been beaten by Madrid, the team who had lost twice already and, truth be told, were mostly just not very good. The night it could have been all over, the title race done when it’s not even in November, was instead the night it finally started. This was different, and so is the season now.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
