Mourinho’s childish Wenger-envy

“I think in this country, only one manager is not under pressure. Steve McClaren is under pressure, I am under pressure, Brendan Rodgers, Manuel Pellegrini – everybody is under pressure. We cannot lose matches, we cannot be below expectations, we have to reach our objectives. I have sympathy with them, and I believe they have also sympathy to myself because it’s a difficult job. There is one that for some reason is outside that list. Good for him. You know. He can speak about the referees before the game, after the game, can push people in the technical area, can cry in the morning, cry in the afternoon and nothing happens. Can not achieve, keep the job, still the king… it’s a privilege.” – Jose Mourinho 2015

Jose Mourinho is one of the most successful managers in the modern game and has earned his reputation as an insatiable winner. He has also earned a reputation for being a nasty, petulant, classless, sneaky little man with an inferiority complex.

For all his successes Mourinho has an unhealthy obsession with Arsène Wenger and his jealousy is as plain as day. When prompted, and even when not, Jose will happily turn a conversation towards Wenger. The caricature of Jose deflecting awkward questions about his management or team with “yeah, but have you seen Wenger?” is fully deserved. In his pre-match press conference for this weekend’s visit of Arsenal and Wenger to Jose’s new stomping ground in Stretford he took his chance to do his two favourite things: have a pop at Wenger and cry about how unfairly he is treated the poor poppet.

“Saturday is a match between the two managers with the best record in the Premier League. Sir Alex Ferguson isn’t here any more… I have three[titles, he [Arsene Wenger] has three…Does that mean we should be respected, even in periods where our results are not the best? I think Mr Wenger has that respect from all of you, I don’t think I have, especially because my last Premier League title was 18 months ago, not 18 years ago.”

Wenger has certainly rubbed many managers up the wrong way over the last 20 years, Ferguson, Pulis, Allardyce and Pardew to name a few but there has always been a level of respect. Sam and Tony would never revere Wenger the way, say, Steve Bruce does but the animosity was short-lived or contained to our fixtures. With other managers any feeling of ill-will calmed or dissipated after a while as with Ferguson and Pardew. It has been 11 years since Wenger and Mourinho first clashed and if anything the animosity has increased and any chance of civility went out of the window once Mourinho called Wenger a ‘specialist in failure’.

That particular comment not only highlights the underlying cause for Mourinho’s ongoing and growing distaste for Wenger but his obsession with how Wenger views him, how he believes the public see him in comparison to Wenger and his petty jealousy. When Mourinho was playing down Chelsea’s title credentials in 2014/15 Wenger was asked why he thought that was and responded suggesting Mourinho may be downplaying out of “fear to fail”. Mourinho took this rather innocuous comment as a personal assault and retaliated with nuclear force.

“If he is right and I am afraid of failure it is because I didn’t fail many times. Eight years without silverware, that’s failure. He’s a specialist in failure. If I do that in Chelsea, eight years, I leave and don’t come back.”

It is clear that Mourinho will never have the job security that Wenger does and that seems to be his biggest cause for consternation. Additionally he has never received the praise Wenger has for his quality of football or lauded for creating a positive and recognisable style. Wenger is revered as a composer, artist, creative. Mourinho is solemnly appreciated for efficiency or ridiculed for parking the bus. Wenger is ridiculed too but not for being successful and perhaps people adding caveats to his success irks Jose too.

Wenger has split opinions amongst the Arsenal support, and in the wider football community too, but overall he is loved and respected, especially by the media who are detached from the microcosm of individual results and the emotions attached to them. Mourinho was never loved in Italy, the Spanish media loathed him and would not pander to his ego the way the British media insipidly did during his first spell. Jose was respected for his success but that success never afforded him the job security Wenger has enjoyed and it visibly sticks in his craw.

Were he not such an antagonistic, acerbic, petty canker you might feel sorry for him. It must be difficult to constantly be looking over your shoulder, waiting for the call that will see you looking for a new job and uprooting your family again—or working away from your family because they’ve grown tired of being on the move all the time. However, this is the bed he has made for himself. His win at all costs mentality, mercenary tactics and maltreatment of his players made him disposable. He never bought into the ideals or history of a club, he was solely concerned with making his own. Jose did not adhere to the principles of a gentleman manager at a gentleman’s football club. He was purely a fixer. He had targets to hit and when he stopped hitting them he was out of the door.

By contrast Wenger embodied the traditions and values of Arsenal Football Club. He immersed himself in the culture and used his success to mould the direction of the club. He created a vision of the future of Arsenal that the board want to see realised and they’ve bought into his methods for doing so. Has he made himself indispensable? Wenger has certainly made sure he will not be replaced by any old Joe. Wenger is a charming man who is sometimes abrasive, Mourinho is an abrasive man who is sometimes charming. It’s a clear difference between the two men. One is win at all costs, the other is more considerate about the long-term future of his club and it’s clear which one is most appreciated by those who aren’t mired in the present and Wenger’s bust at the Emirates Stadium alongside Arsenal great Herbert Chapman bis testament to that.

Jose may feel that Arsène doesn’t deserve the job security he enjoys and of course there are some Arsenal supporters who agree with Mourinho that Wenger no longer deserves job security but it is not their opinion that counts when it comes to matters of contracted employment. Arsène’s longevity at Arsenal is the reward for his successes, his reaction to failure and the relationships he has cultivated. His early success at Arsenal came without a billion pound price tag and he kept Arsenal in the Champions League through a difficult financial period so it is natural the board felt he had earned the right to be the manager to benefit from their new financial power. The media respect him and are friendly with him not especially because of his affable character but more so his familiarity. Many journalists covering the Premier League have no pre-Wenger careers to speak of and those around for his first years were often junior writers.

In Spain and Italy Jose was disliked for his egotistical nature; they found Jose to be a malevolent and petulant character. He was accused of freezing out Casillas because he suspected he was leaking information to his media presenter girlfriend. Whether it was true or not is irrelevant, Mourinho failed to inspire loyalty from those players the way he did the Chelsea players. Maybe he felt he was a naturally inspirational character, when it is entirely possible the Chelsea players loved him because he made them successful whereas the Madrid players were well-versed in success.

Mourinho’s revilement of Wenger reminds me of a jealous child hating another child for getting a Christmas present they wanted without a thought or care for the reasons behind it. From the child’s point of view they deserve that toy more because they get better grades and that’s understandable. You can’t really expect a small child to think critically, analytically or logically; they’re children. Eventually they develop those cerebral skills and grow out of their irrational jealously, or at least conduct themselves in a way that publicly suggests they are coping with the “injustices” they perceive in a mature way. It seems that Mourinho is an outlier in that sense.

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