This is a 100 percent fictional story about Jose Mourinho being trapped and burdened by the standards of success that he set when he was younger.
When Jose Mourinho was in his 40s, he spent international breaks perched in his living room, legs crossed, absorbing every game he could. He filled dozens of notebooks with scouting reports, detailing hundreds of players’ strengths and weaknesses. At full time he would also recite his observations to himself, burning them into his memory.
Often, Mourinho found himself waking in his chair at midnight with a crick in his neck, still clutching his pen. In those days he saw the path to success and fame clearly. He had to win every year. There was no other way. He abhorred those who made excuses for failure. He believed that the combination of his hard work and innate genius would draw him down the road to fame and success.
Now in his 50s, Mourinho thinks that success might be relative. There are numerous ways into and out of it. To think (the naivete!) that there is only one real path is to trap oneself.
These days, he only watches two or three games an afternoon before taking his glasses off and saying to himself, “that’s enough.” Then he turns off the television and shares a bottle of wine with his wife. In the evening, the two of them walk around the city.
This particular afternoon, Mourinho stops watching after just one game. He takes off his glasses and says to himself, “that’s enough.” There’s no wine left in the house. He grasps at the chair’s right arm, putting his other hand on his lower back and groaning as he pushes himself up. Human life depends on a series of renewed agreements between a person and the world around him, he thinks. To keep the peace, to live in harmony: between a person and other persons to keep the peace; to live at all: between a person and their own body. The body is the site of that most fragile accord. No sooner is the deal struck than the body begins to betray the terms.
Mourinho has changed drastically over the years. Feeling his sore back, he thinks success might also be as fragile as his body. And like the body, success can quickly turn traitor. He tells his wife that he’s off to get more wine.
When Mourinho walks through Manchester without his wife, he sometimes forgets his way and gets lost. This disorientation happens so suddenly he thinks he must be losing his mind. When he tries to return home, he finds himself returning to the places he’s been before, as though he was circling around the same paths. To avoid this, he often ties a ball of thread to his front door and unrolls it as he walks, so that he can trace his way back.
Mourinho is walking to the store with his string trailing behind him. He thinks Manchester has been more like Borges’ City of Immortals than the labyrinth at Knossos. There is no monster waiting for him here, it is instead just an immense labyrinth of dead-end passages and inverted stairways. “The city,” he says to himself, “is a structure compounded to confuse men; its architecture, rich in symmetries, is subordinated to that end.” He turns to make sure that his path back home is visible.
A labyrinth, though it has many dead-end passages, has one true path that leads to the center. It’s different from a maze in that respect: A maze has several entrances and exits. In both, a lost person is forced into the existential crisis of having to return constantly to somewhere they’ve passed through before, and in turn, confronting both who they have been and what they’ve become. A maze, though also meant to confuse, at least offers the mercy of numerous possibilities ahead. A chance to be several different people. A labyrinth, like that of Borges, collapses those possibilities to one indiscernible path. And if a person cannot find that path quickly enough, they are likely to go mad.
Mourinho walks to the store and buys three bottles of Barca Velha. When the clerk hands him the bag, he knows that the clerk will ask him if Manchester United will win the title. He has asked the same question every time they see each other since Mourinho arrived in the city. But before the clerk can speak, Mourinho pre-empts him: “Remember, we finished second last season and won the Europa League the year before that. I think that’s also success.”
On his way home, a man in a long overcoat bumps into Mourinho and the bottles of wine fall and shatter. He doesn’t stop or apologize. He continues on his way as if nothing had happened and Mourinho was invisible. After the initial shock, Mourinho, his pants drenched in wine, runs after him.
But as fast as Mourinho runs, he can’t seem to catch up. The stranger zig-zags through the streets, vanishing around corners just as Mourinho gets a glimpse of his overcoat. Several times when Mourinho thinks that he is close, he turns a corner that he saw his adversary turn, only to find a dead-end. When he turns around, he sees the figure walking down the opposite end of the street. He runs for what feels like hours, but the distance between the two stays the same.
Mourinho stops to catch his breath and looking around where he is, he feels a sudden sense of dread. He realizes that in his chase he has dropped his ball of thread and has gotten himself lost. He is scared and angry. It begins to rain, and in his miserable state, drenched in wine and rain, he shakes his head and says, to nobody in particular: “This city is so horrible that its mere existence contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. No one in the world can be strong or happy here.”
Mourinho wants more than anything to scream at the top of his lungs that he is exhausted and afraid. He wants to smash the concrete underneath to reveal the one true path and find his way home. But he knows that if he smashes the ground, he’s more likely to be swallowed up than for the city to enlighten him. So instead he walks into a bar and orders a drink.
The man in the overcoat follows Mourinho in and sits at the bar. The stranger asks the bartender to put on the France game, and he and the bartender begin to talk about the action. In his face, Mourinho sees something familiar and yet ultimately unrecognizable, as if the two had met briefly some years before. Like a face in a crowd that stands out because of a certain feature or uniqueness. The man says to the bartender, “Didier Deschamps is a great manager. France won the World Cup because the players bought into his vision and played to win, rather than to please.”
Mourinho asks him what’s more important, “To win or to play beautiful football?” The stranger turns to Mourinho, acknowledging the weary Portuguese for the first time.
“The point is to win. Beauty has no place in competition. We should leave those useless questions to to the artists and philosophers.”
“What if the players aren’t willing to sacrifice their attacking style in order to win?”
“A manager who can’t convince his players to play for him is not a good manager.”
“How do you measure a great manager?”
“By the number of trophies that he’s won.”
“How often does a great manager need to win the league?”
“He needs to win every year; only specialists in failure brag about their past successes.
“Do you think Hegel would agree?”
“Who the hell is Hegel?”
“He believes that we can only understand a thing at its end. You judge the manager’s career as a whole, not from year to year.”
“That sounds like a convenient philosophy for those who can’t win consistently.”
“What if the manager can’t finish first? What if it’s impossible for him to do so?”
“Then I guess he can be happy as a bridesmaid, but for me, there is no impossible.”
Good conversations are like mazes. Two people can enter through different points and even if they never meet in the structure, they are changed by the journey and exit from a different point from where they started. But to Mourinho, this conversation with this stranger yields nothing but confusion and frustration.
“What should happen to a manager who was once great but now finds it difficult to win as he used to? Is it not fair to grant him some patience, as he’s earned it from his reputation?”
“If the manager had any honor, he would resign.”
“I see.” Another dead-end.
Mourinho leaves the bar first. He wonders if greatness, like the soul’s alliance with the body, is fragile. Greatness is time, he thinks. Anyone who thinks he can hold onto greatness is a fool. It is always passing by, even if we do not notice. That truth is inherent in mortality.
After a few hours of aimless searching, he finds his thread not too far from the pulverized remnants of his wine. The rain lets up. Bending down to pick up the thread, he can’t help but feel ashamed. Though he knows that greatness is fleeting, he still feels that he’s lost something essential in himself that could have helped to retain it. “Maybe all undertakings are in vain,” he says to himself. “Even the greatest men will eventually find themselves at the mercy of time, and lost in labyrinth. Maybe the best way to live is to forever stay inside. To never come out. To be in a state of pure speculation, away from all these useless struggles.”
When he gets home, Mourinho sits back in his chair, put on his glasses, crosses his legs and turns on another game. He pulls out a notebook and writes a flurry of names, strengths, and weaknesses. He mutters to himself as he writes. This process is now harder for him than it used to be: he fumbles some names and forgets certain attributes, but the ritual gives him relief.