Russian roulette…Mourinho weaves the threads of his latest adventure

Real Madrid is giving the Special One the hype it needs

Alvaro Arbeloa is no longer the coach of Real Madrid, it is almost settled. Therefore, the question now knocking on the doors of the Bernabeu is: Who will take over from a coach who has lost the locker room, the results and all possible hope of competing?

In just 72 hours, the scene in “Real” changed completely. a month and a half ago, Jose Mourinho’s name was completely left out of Florentino Perez’s accounts, and today the club’s president considers the Portuguese coach “the only option” to rebuild the team and organize the dressing room.

But Mourinho, a man who no longer has anything to prove, especially in Madrid, plays a completely different game.

This is what destroyed me before.

Last Tuesday evening, the video call between Jose Mourinho and Florentino Perez, which lasted for about an hour, ended. Jorge Mendes, football’s most powerful agent, sat on the sidelines and watched idly in a shot that sums up the nature of what happened. Mourinho himself presented his non-negotiables and Perez listened.

This was not the first contact. The call was preceded by a personal trip by Peres to Lisbon, as the president opted to make direct contact after reports suggested Mendes’ first messages had failed.

What reached public opinion was not a negotiated settlement in the traditional sense. It was a public diagnostic document of all that marred his first term from 2010 to 2013.

Mourinho wants to control the medical staff and have a direct line to Perez alone, without adviser Anas Lagrieri or chief executive Jose Angel Sanchez, with the power to drop up to seven players and abandon grueling preparation tours in the Middle East and North America.

Thus, each item seems to have an unwritten subheading. “This is what destroyed me before, and I will never go down the same path.”

The man seems not only to beg for authority, but to be conducting an earlier stage of public trial, sitting as the accused and in fact the judge.

With the leakage of these conditions, public opinion conveys one message that cannot be interpreted. any future failure will not be held responsible because he has already decided what is necessary to avoid it.

Peres and the power ceiling…all or nothing

It’s hard to understand the scale Mourinho is asking without remembering Perez’s character as president. The man who built the Bernabeu empire over decades has never been known for giving his coaches open powers. they only have a field and sometimes interfere with it.

But his move to Lisbon himself reveals more than it hides. Real Madrid are in dire need of a rescue and Perez knows he will find what he’s looking for with Mourinho, and he trusts that and wants to seize the opportunity.

Accordingly, the real pressure is arguably not on Mourinho but on Perez, who faces a second consecutive season without a major title and a dressing room seething after a public spat between Choimini and Valverde in training.

Mourinho, who knows this context well, has set his terms with surgical precision, not with the mood of a negotiator and the logic of “Russian roulette” – all or nothing.

When rejection is victory

Mourinho knows what he is doing and has controlled his media history for three decades. When he wants to hide something, he does. He initially denied any contact with Real, then a few days later details of the round-the-clock meeting emerged via video.

This sequence is no accident, but rather epitomizes what the Portuguese veteran is always good at;

Therefore, the most important question arises. what if the negotiations collapse?

This is the genius of the maneuver. Perez accepting these terms means Mourinho will emerge victorious. After more than a decade of relative marginalization at United, Tottenham, Roma, Fenerbahce and Benfica, he will return stronger than he left and his conclusion will be epic.

If Perez rejects any point, Mourinho will walk out of the picture with dignity, wearing a banner: “I wanted to build a project, but they didn’t dare.”

Here, the rejection turns into a moral victory, and he reconstructs his image as a person who does not obey anyone’s conditions.

Required noise

Here the scene is complete. “Chelsea” sources expressed clear reservations about Mourinho’s return, and journalist Ben Jacobs noted that there are no real plans for it.

But the highlight is not the management’s stance, but the fact that his name was linked to Stamford Bridge from the start, and the uproar reached such a level that club legend Joe Cole publicly called for his appointment, saying: Newcastle could also be considering him, according to some reports.

Mourinho hasn’t contacted any of them, hasn’t sent an agent and hasn’t made any announcements in their direction. But his sheer persistence in negotiating with Real Madrid on his high terms produces all this automatically, because the market only knows this language. a man who speaks to the biggest club in the world at this weight is only a desirable option for everyone who is looking for a solution to their intractable problems. That artificial scarcity creates demand, and George Mendes and George Mendes before him know it well.

At the age of 63, Mourinho is looking for extra cash or a boost to a title-laden career. He’s hoping for a strong and solid conclusion that will bring down the curtain on the fictional scene of the “Special One” novel… and it looks like that scene is coming.

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