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“The best team lost,” José Mourinho snapped at Jurgen Klopp as Spurs and Liverpool coaches fist-bumped on the Anfield touchline on Wednesday night.
Klopp laughed, which was the right reaction. Did the best team lose? It was the classic Mourinho: without grace and without wanting it funny. We can add it to the exhibits in your Hubris Collection, although we will need to build a larger museum.
The best team lost? Well, if you prefer a concrete tower block to the Colosseum, then yes. If you prefer a petrified forest to nature in full bloom, then yes. If you prefer caution to boldness, then yes.
The final whistle at Anfield saw José Mourinho tell Jurgen Klopp that ‘the best team lost’
The Liverpool manager could only smile at Mourinho’s random outburst of petulance.
If you prefer to hide around the corner until the coast is clear to go on an adventure, then yes. If you prefer to play without the ball than to play with the ball, then yes, the best team lost.
But if you value creativity over destruction, if you want your team to express itself, if you don’t want your side to take cover against the ropes when they play against decent opponents, then you will realize the idea that the best team lost when the first two faced off in the league is a fallacy. The Spurs approached Liverpool. But the best team won.
The truth is that under Mourinho, the famous and old motto of the Spurs has had a rewriting. Daring is doing has become Daring is not. Caution is the watchword now. Passive aggression. Absorbing pressure. It was always assumed that the identity of the Spurs was about an attractive and attacking football. No longer.
At Anfield, the Spurs were very limited and had two shots on goal throughout the game.
Yes, there is a raw beauty in Tottenham that Mourinho has bastardized from the team that Mauricio Pochettino left him.
Functional, fearsome, superbly organized, and reduced to the core in 90 percent of what it does, it bursts into wild glory in bursts of brilliant isolated and impressive counterattack, channeled through Harry Kane and Son Heung-min.
In those moments, yes, the Spurs are magnificent to watch. Klopp referred to them as a “counterattack monster”. Son is my player of the season so far. And when they fight back, they do it so well that it’s hard to stop them.
But once the fireworks go off, you often have to wait a long time for the next one to arrive. And in between, the night is as black as pitch. On Wednesday, the Spurs had two shots on goal throughout the game.
In his new book, The Greatest Games, Jamie Carragher points out that there is no “right way” to win a soccer game and that is true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there are some who revere Mourinho as a tactician and enjoy his groundbreaking football and tireless search for ways to thwart the great ambitions of others.
There are times when destruction is enjoyed. The Spurs were excellent against Manchester City when they met in North London last month. That day, yes, they were the best team. The city fell apart too easily and exposed too easily. His attacking game was great in possession but little conviction. The Spurs deserved to win.
Mourinho is the antithesis of coaches like Klopp and Marcelo Bielsa (above) who play attack
But on the whole, there is something bleak about Mourinho’s philosophy. It’s hard not to lean towards the more proactive, offensive and creative soccer from teams led by men like Pep Guardiola, Klopp and Marcelo Bielsa.
Oh, and Pochettino, who achieved so much at Spurs with a much more entertaining style of football than Mourinho. It is a personal preference. We are all allowed.
It wouldn’t be fun if all coaches played the same way. Part of the magic of soccer is that there are so many competing philosophies. But fear is at the heart of Mourinho’s football. It governs it. His dominant emotion is fear of what an opponent might do to him. And the beauty of their fear is that it makes us appreciate even more the bravery of men like Guardiola, Klopp and Bielsa.
We need ugliness so that beauty has a sharper relief and Mourinho provides it. It demands that a beautiful football work harder to beat it. If City want to beat Spurs at the end of this season, they will have to excel. A Mourinho team is a barrier to tear down. It is an obstacle for the best teams.
It is normal for some Spurs fans to take refuge in denial of the style that Mourinho has introduced. They’ve won something so long ago that it’s hard to envy their willingness to embrace the pursuit of success by any means necessary.
They have made a deal with Mourinho and if he wins the title, he will have done his part and more. You will live up to the greatest achievements of your career.
Roberto Firmino’s late header sank the Spurs, whose motto should now be ‘Daring is Not Doing’
The Spurs look like a team that is going to be in this title race to the end. This is a strange season and Mourinho has built an efficient and ruthless machine. If Liverpool falter, they will be there. If City don’t regain their old balance, Spurs will be there. This is your optimal time.
Next season will be Mourinho’s third at the club and history tells us that he is not a long-term coach. Evidence suggests that his narcissism begins to irritate his players after a while.
If he doesn’t win the league this season, then the deal wasn’t worth taking. Pochettino placed Spurs in second place in the Premier League, not to mention the Champions League final, by encouraging his team to play football that was a pleasure to watch.
If Mourinho goes one better, it will have been worth it. If he doesn’t, Spurs fans may come to reflect on the fact that they traded yes for no.
Don’t blame Wenger
At the festival of wringing hands over Arsenal’s current plight, some fans have tried to blame Arsene Wenger. If that wasn’t so much fun, it would be sad.
The truth is that Wenger’s astute management camouflaged the financial restrictions imposed on spending in the Emirates for years.
Arsenal’s current difficult situation shows how good a coach Arsene Wenger really was
He still kept Arsenal in the top four, almost to the end of his tenure. He was punished when he finished sixth. Arsenal are currently 15th, which puts things in perspective.
So, no, it’s not Wenger’s fault. Nor is it from Mikel Arteta. It’s time for Arsenal fans to stop pointing fingers at their coaches and look at the ownership and decisions that Stan Kroenke has made.
Arsenal were once the model for a well-run club. No longer.
Christmas concussion flashback
I am grateful to John Armstrong from Bangor in Northern Ireland for submitting an image of a page from this column from an issue of The Mail on Sunday in March 2016.
The column warned of a reckoning day coming for contact sports for its attitude toward concussion-related injuries.
I wish I could report that Mr. Armstrong had been perusing the article at regular intervals, but said that he had unfolded the page when he was unwrapping his Christmas decorations.
At least it’s a step up from tomorrow’s fish and chips role.
For the sake of the players’ well-being, there is an increasingly compelling case for the introduction of five substitutes this Premier League season. Sadly, there is also a compelling case that the clubs in the division harbor deep mistrust of everything the elite is proposing. Some of the big clubs seem to think that they can pretend that the Big Stitch-Up Project proposals were never leaked. But they were. The smaller clubs have memories too.
