Jose Mourinho’s second season at Real Madrid began with a different tone in the transfer
market.
Full-back Fabio Coentrao was signed for over €30m, and a further €25m was spent on
Nuri Sahin, Raphael Varane and Jose Callejon.
Hamit Altintop moved from Bayern Munich on a free.
None of those players would prove decisive that year, not in a good way at least, and
pre-season was hardly tranquil either.
Mourinho grumbled through a summer tour of California, taking issue with the facilities,
and also had a protracted falling-out with Lassana Diarra.
On Real’s return to Spain they also lost the two-legged Super Cup to Barcelona, falling
5-4 to Barcelona.
The tie was actually a classic, but would be remembered for an ugly brawl in the second
game, the low-point of which was Mourinho poking Guardiola’s assistant Tito Vilanova
in the eye.
Many years later, Mourinho would reflect on the incident, describing his regret.
“If I could, this would be one of the things I would never repeat,” he told the author
Joao Gabriel in 2021.
“Before that, I had been winning, winning and winning.
I got into this state that if I wasn't winning, it seemed like the end of the world to me."
But at the time, the incident perfectly described how toxic the rivalry between Barcelona and
Real Madrid had become, with Mourinho the central protagonist.
And yet, with dressing-room politics raging throughout the season and Mourinho’s famed
constructive tension dialled up to 11, Real were often magnificent in 2011-12.
Yes, they would miss out in the Champions League again, losing a semi-final penalty
shooutout to Bayern Munich, and they’d be eliminated from the Copa Del Rey by – of
course – Barcelona, but they’d win LaLiga by nine points, break the 100-point mark,
and score the most goals in a league season in their history.
And the quality of some of them was extraordinary.
Gonzalo Higuain’s rasping volley into the top-corner against Espanyol, for instance,
or either of Ronaldo’s thunderous long-range drives against Sevilla and Levante.
But the real marvel was the construction of the goals and the combinations between the
players; whatever Mourinho’s reputation for pragmatism, it was football of the highest
quality.
The centrepiece of which was one of the finest counter-attacks the game has ever seen, a
facet of the Portuguese’s coaching which has often been misunderstood.
Mourinho has always coached a highly structured system without the ball and, during his time
at Real, could be accused of overloading attacking players with defensive instruction or fixating
on his “high pressure triangle” concept in midfield, once possession was regained
he was happy to defer to players’ instincts.
The ball had to move forward and quickly, in as few passes as possible and often out-wide
as a first port of call, but the patterns of moves were dictated by the players themselves.
The results could be glorious - like the beautiful flowing move that saw Ronaldo score against
Ajax in the Champions League group, but – domestically – it was a championship built on lightning
quick, vertical football which perfectly utilised Real’s abilities as a side.
Ronaldo scored 46 goals in the league alone.
Higuain and Benzema managed a further 43 combined.
Real, collectively, scored a ridiculous 121 times and produced a league season which,
a home loss to Barcelona and another curious away defeat to Levante aside, was near to
perfect.
Fittingly, the title was virtually guaranteed at Camp Nou and a 2-1 win was sealed when
Mesut Ozil played Cristiano Ronaldo behind the home defence with one of the passes of
the season, and Real’s talisman finished beyond Victor Valdes.
By the beginning of 2012-13, Pep Guardiola was gone and Mourinho and Madrid were without
a nemesis.
That did little to ease the tension, though.
They would win the Spanish Super Cup, beating Tito Vilanova’s Barca, but would then take
just four points from their first four games, culminating in a loss to Sevilla, after which
Mourinho attacked his players in front of the media, criticising their concession at
a set-piece.
Madrid’s form would mean that the title race was practically over by Christmas.
They would lose to Malaga, draw poorly with Espanyol at home and fall to a 1-0 defeat
to Betis.
After that game, an insipid effort at the Benito Villamarin, opposing coach Pepe Mel
gave a damning verdict of Madrid’s attacking structures and inability to create against
a low-block.
“We tried to make sure Madrid had the ball”, Mel told the media, “because that way they
harm themselves.
There were issues at the top of the pitch, too, and question marks over Cristiano Ronaldo’s
future.
Ronaldo had not been Florentino Perez’s signing, Ramon Calderon had negotiated and
agreed his transfer with Manchester United, and the relationship between them wasn’t
without its difficulties.
When Ronaldo attended the European Football of the Year award in August 2012, Perez did
not accompany him.
He would finish equal second in the voting, tied with Lionel Messi, and while he lost
out to Andres Iniesta, particularly galling to Ronaldo was the fact that Joan Laporta
had accompanied his club’s players to Monte Carlo and that his own president had not.
“It could be that I’m a bit sad” Ronaldo replied, when asked about his muted goal celebrations
that season.
“The people in the club know why” he added, cryptically, and transfer stories would swirl
around him for the rest of the season.
Lingering issues were certainly a theme of the year.
Fabio Coentrao’s game time was a continual source of contention, so too was the team’s
defensive line and their approach in big games.
Mourinho’s relationship with some of the highest profile players at the club was also
strained.
Ahead of a home tie with Manchester City in the Champions League group stages, Sergio
Ramos would be dropped.
Later in the season, with the Madrid media muttering about “black sheep” in the dressing-room,
Iker Casillas would suffer the same fate and would see first Adan and then Diego Lopez
picked ahead of him.
And yet, the Champions League might have provided a dramatic end to what would prove Mourinho’s
final season.
Manchester United were beaten in the round of 16, Galatasaray were defeated despite a
second-leg loss in Istanbul, and Real were paired with Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund
in the semi-final.
The first-leg at Westfalenstadion effectively settled the tie.
Casillas and Benzema were left on the bench, Ramos played in what had become his less favoured
and less influential right-back role, and Robert Lewandowski took advantage of Madrid’s
deep line to score four times.
Mourinho’s side would win the second leg 2-0, but they were out; Mourinho’s third
attempt to capture La Decima had ended – again – at the semi-final stage.
Less than a month later, the final hope of silverware was gone, too, as Madrid allowed
a one-goal lead to slip in the final of the Copa del Rey, losing 2-1 to Atletico in extra
time and after seeing Cristiano Ronaldo sent off for two yellow cards and Mourinho, again,
sent to the stands for dissent.
The ending had long since been inevitable.
Famously, however, Mourinho’s next step was not to be Manchester United, as had long
been assumed, with David Moyes’ succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson instead.
Rather, it would be a return to Chelsea and a reconciliation with Roman Abramovich.
He left a conflicting legacy.
A couple of years later, having won the Premier League again with Chelsea in 2015, he himself
reflected on his time at Real Madrid, saying that “to win the title in Spain with 100
points against the best Barcelona ever was a big achievement that I enjoyed so much.”
He was right, of course, because it certainly was an achievement.
But whether he or anyone else really enjoyed it is another matter entirely.