Towards the end of the second hour, with the time beginning to drag like heat, and even the flies losing the will to live, José Mourinho leans towards the microphone. “After 20 years of football,” he announces with a wry smile, “this is the longest press conference of my career.”
“Welcome to Turkey,” replies Ali Koc, the billionaire president of Fenerbahce.
And of course it always starts like this: with smiles and quips, with handshakes and camera flashes, with the promise of something new and pristine. With warm tributes to his predecessor and a catchy pre-written slogan – “the shirt is going to be my skin,” he says at his unveiling – and the sincerely expressed belief that there is nowhere on Earth he would rather be than right here, in Europe’s ninth-best league, at a club that hasn’t won the title in a decade, diligently preparing for the Champions League second qualifying round in late July.
“What is ambition?” he asked enigmatically on Monday afternoon. “To have a London club and fight to be sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth? To have a team in Italy stay fifth, sixth, seventh? To be in Portugal? Ambition is to play to win. Ambition is to feel the heat. For me, Fenerbahce means ambition. This means I am not in my comfort zone.”
Like the very best actors, part of Mourinho’s residual appeal is the way he can still say this stuff and sound like he means it. Incidentally this is what makes him – at the age of 61, with his best coaching years well in the past – such an irresistible target for brands and sponsors. José sincerely flogging sticker albums on the telly. José sincerely reclining into his business‑class airline seat. José sincerely plugging some new football app. Hang on, you think. He doesn’t appear to be remotely embarrassed by this at all. He appears genuinely invested in the product. Did he even get sacked by Roma, or was it “mutual consent”?
Of course, the unspoken part was left unspoken for a reason. Mourinho’s appointment at Fenerbahce was not, by any measure, the biggest footballing story of the day. It wasn’t even the biggest unveiling of the day. This is already shaping up to be a summer of monumental managerial manoeuvres, with the Chelsea, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Ajax, Manchester United, Brighton, West Ham, Marseille, Juventus and Napoli jobs either vacant or in contention. And Mourinho’s name – to what we can assume was his immense personal chagrin – was basically nowhere in any of it.
How we reached this point is one of those stories that feels instinctively familiar, and yet seems to make less sense the more you interrogate it. Particularly when you examine some of the coaches being touted for these jobs: men such as Vincent Kompany and Enzo Maresca and Kieran McKenna and Thiago Motta who are still basically all potential, whose reputations rest on one or two promising seasons and the intoxicating elixir of novelty.
And in an age when clubs increasingly derive revenue not just from gate receipts but from engagement, not just the capacity of their stadium but the kind of story they can sell for public consumption, there is a tangible value in being able to offer the impression of renewal. Some or all of the above may turn out to be excellent coaches. But right now the crucial part – the sellable part – is that we don’t know.
Whereas with Mourinho, we do know, or at least we think we do. Even as he arrives, you can see the outline of how it ends, identify the faultlines that will one day turn into deadly rifts, spot the weaknesses that Mourinho will one day brandish as excuses. “A big percentage of our players are in the Euros,” he pointed out by way of managing expectations for the Champions League qualifiers. He demands time and calmness, urges president Koc “to be stable, to be patient, to be balanced”.
Yes, well: good luck with that. And perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this job is the extent to which Mourinho will be at the mercy of forces way beyond his control. For one thing, he has walked straight into a bitter and baffling presidential election campaign, with Koc standing against his predecessor, Aziz Yildirim, this weekend. Yildirim has been claiming that Mourinho had to ask his permission to take the job, and that his first move will be to sign Paulo Dybala and Romelu Lukaku from his former club Roma. Mourinho had to deny this, and pledged his allegiance to Koc. He could well be working with Yildirim by next Monday. So, you know, good luck with that.
Then there is the football, and an ageing squad in which Edin Dzeko (38) and Dusan Tadic (35) will bear much of the attacking burden. The schedule will be relentless, the standards exacting: Mourinho’s predecessor, Ismail Kartal, led Fenerbahce to a record 99 points last season, but Galatasaray got 102, so he was sacked. The Champions League’s new league phase is three rounds away. So, you know, good luck with that, too.
But there is also a certain synergy here. The Fenerbahce fans who flocked in their tens of thousands to the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium on Sunday already worship Mourinho like a deity and will expect deific feats in return for their devotion. It is not sufficient simply to win; they must win with spite: to advocate and emote, to demean rivals and impugn referees, to scream about conspiracies and corruptions. This of course is Mourinho’s constituency, his sanctuary. Discomfort is his comfort.
This is why the Saudi riyal and the Major League Soccer dollar held little interest for him. A seething cauldron; a packed stadium; a club sufficiently starved of success to suspend its disbelief one more time. A two-year deal, which feels like the height of optimism on both sides. It always starts the same way. It always ends the same way. It’s the bit in between that still beguiles, the act of pure faith, the conviction – against all available evidence – that this ride will be worth the trouble.
