The first goal was certainly lucky. The second was as good a counter attacking goal as youâll see. They set up very well defensively and showed they had learned from previous defeats. But they still had to ride their luck somewhat against an opponent who were not at the same pitch as they were in previous encounters.
Mourinho produces teams that are pragmatic, cautious and not especially good to watch. He does not produce great teams.
First goal wasnât lucky. Barca didnât defend a corner properly but that wasnât bad luck. Just poor defending.
If one team has the fortune to be effectively handed a goal by the opposition in such a manner, yes, it is lucky. I wouldnât count it as bad luck for the team thatâs at the wrong end of it as itâs self-inflicted, but yes, it most certainly is good luck for the team that benefits.
Take off the blinkers pal. You should call Barcaâs goal very lucky then too with the second shot heading straight to Casillas until deflecting off Arbeloa. Real Madrid were the better side on Saturday by a comfortable margin. I didnât think that was in dispute.
Iâll bite on this one. Clearly Mourinho is an excellent man-manager and he wouldnât have won those trophies if he wasnât. He has done good jobs wherever heâs gone. Closer examination however shows that most of his teams have had outrageous luck. Heâs also been lucky in having huge amounts of money to spent at his clubs.
However none of his teams have been especially attractive to watch, and his conceding of the initiative in the semi-final ties both this year, last year, in 2005 and 2007, and in all Clasico games betrays a fear and a reluctance to fully trust his players that shouldnât be present in the great managers.
Irrelevant to whether he is a great manager or not.
At Porto he got lucky, being handed the UEFA Cup by Rab Douglas, beating Manchester United with a lucky away goal off a rebounded free kick right at the end of a match they were outplayed in and kept in by a terrible decision to disallow a Paul Scholes goal which would have made it 2-0. The draw then compoletely opened up for them and they took their chance to beat three very mediocre teams and win the weakest Championsâ League in my memory.
This is the one place he got lucky. They stole a Champions League and afterwards he was rewarded with an opportunity he would have been unlikely to get otherwise.
That said, if United had won that would you be saying it was a weak Champions League, you are being EPList.
At Chelsea he was lucky in being handed a blank chequebook by Roman Abramovich. Manchester United were going through their weakest years since their era of dominance began in 1993 with Arsenal also beginning their slide away from the peak of '02 and '04. He won two leagues convincingly which is not to be denigrated but failed and failed badly twice aginst inferior Liverpool teams in Europe, granted he was unlucky with the Luis Garcia goal. Chelsea were also throughly outplayed by Barcelona in 2006. Chelsea also lost a league they should probably have won in 2007.
This is the most bizarre statement ever. How was he lucky to go to Chelsea who had loads of money? You make it seem like he turned up and someone said suprise your our 50th Manager heres a load of money. He knew the cash was there going in, he got the job and took it. Top managers get top jobs shocker. Chelsea had cash before that without too much success. There are as many instances of managers failing with loads of cash as there are fellas succeeding. United were hardly skint either. He used the core of the team that was there previously and not good enough and made them good enough.
His Championsâ League win with Inter is probably his most impressive achievement, preluded by that superb transfer deal getting Etoâo and getting rid of Zlatan where he for once outfoxed Pep Guardiola. They were unquestionably a terrifically soild unit. I donât really want to go into all this again but the luck they had in that semi-final was obscene, with the ash cloud making Barcelona endure 13 hours on a bus, an offside goal in the first leg and a wrongly disallowed Barca goal at the end of the second leg. Domestically, Inter had already won two leagues in a row under Mancini and Juventus and Milan were at a low ebb. Roma were their main challengers which says it all.
So we are agreed he did very well at inter?
With Madrid, heâs done adequately but hasnât performed to the expected heights. Despite the win on Saturday another match in which they had a huge slice of luck, he has several times failed badly in the matches with Barcelona. The negative approach he brought to the first leg Champions Leaue semi-final and the cup matches this year was an embarrassment to a club with Madridâs tradition of attacking football. Last year he fell short of the points total set by Manuel Pellegriniâs team in 2009-10. Heâs done the business in the league this year, but then again he would have been expected to with a huge squad, vast amounts of money and a squad which has the cream of the worldâs non-Barcelona registered attacking talent. Not to mention a Barcelona team clearly plumming the depths of tiredness for most of the season.
Barca are potentially one of the greatest teams of all time, with Messi one of the greatest players of all time. The core of the team have played together since youths.
How would anyone be expected to beat them? He did a great job in pulling Madrid together.
Mourinho - an excellent manager no doubt. But overrated.
Incorrect.
Pep Guardiola, handed potentially the greatest team of all time. Sold their best Striker (Eto) and cost them a champions league.
Neglected to rotate his squad in a league where there is a severe lack of oppostion outside of RM.
Has a team which regularly plays without 2 recognisable centre halfs. Has done nothing to remedy this. Presumably because they were getting away with it.
Refused to replace their only genuine striker(Villa) when he got injured.
Made his team into robots who are incapable of a plan B.
Pep Guardiola. Overated.
Iâll presume your wunmming with that last comment. Manchester United were a long way off the team they had been in 2003/04. Juventus, AC Milan and Real Madrid who were the three favourites that season were all taken out by weaker opponents.
Mourinho signed Kezman, Maniche, Sidwell, Jarosik and Diarra for Chelsea. He let Robben go. Khedira has been a fairly mediocre signing for Madrid. Whatâs your point? Name me a manager that hasnât made a bad signing and you might have one.
Robots. Seriously. Is that the best you can do?
When it comes to your criticism of Guardiola youâre actually using the argument you use to eulogise Mourinho to undermine yourself. Success. 13 trophies out of a possible 16. Even if this Barca team donât win another thing under Guardiola they will still be the best Iâve ever seen. They havenât just won things. Theyâve elevated football to a higher level than any team before them, played in a style that no team has ever matched and changed how people think about the game. Thatâs what separates the truly great from the, well, not quite as good.
Perhaps you think those players could have done it without a manager, or any manager? Perhaps, but they hadnât won a trophy in the previous two seasons, so I think itâs unlikely. Look at how the Madrid team with Ronaldo, Zidane, Figo and Beckham fell apart when stripped of the influence of Del Bosque.
barca are shit mate- inter and chelsea proved that- all you have to do is pull back deep and let them tap the ball around the middle going nowhere-then hit them on the break as the defense is woeful
its a woeful inditement of ferguson and wegner that they were too snobbish to play defensively against this poor team last season
sidwaddell has made some good points here I must say. However the sheer consistency of success that Mourinho has had wherever he has gone indicates for me that it all canât be down to luck and that he truly is a great manager.
Big difference. The goal came at the end of a sustained period of attacking pressure by Barcelona where Madrid had already had a huge escape following the initial shot. Barcelona forced the goal rather than being handed it like Valdes and Puyol did to Khedira.
If you want to compare it to any goal it should be the one Madrid got in the first leg against Bayern. Those two goals were very similar in that they were both tap ins at the end of a sustained onslaught which could have already resulted in a goal. Neither were lucky.
Iâm certainly not arguing that.
Itâs very relevant. What is greatness? To me style is a necessity, not just success. Who are the great and most remembered teams of the past 60 years?
Real Madrid of the 1955-60 era. Hungary of the 50s. Brazil 1970 and 1982. Holland 1974. Ajax of the early 70s. Liverpool. AC Milan of the late 80s and early 90s. Not all of those teams won but theyâre remembered as great. None of Mourinhoâs teams will join that list.
The truly great managers? Busby. Stein. Paisley. Sacchi. Capello. Michels. Lobanovskiy. What did they have in common? Style, and most cases changing the thinking about how the game was played. Guardiola will join them. Mourinho? Maybe in time. Not for now.
Barcelona should be up there with the Argentina 1990 side and the Steau Bucharest side of the late 80âs/ early 90âs as one of the most boring sides to ever grace the game.
And Italy 1982.
Anti-Italian racist.
Greece 2004
Anti-football sympathiser.
Ireland 2012
Spain 2010.