Soccer: Strife and times of the Special One

It was billed as a cross between a religious happening, a re-run of the Spanish civil war and the greatest sporting event in history.

But to those who care about these things, the Champions League semifinals between the Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona were something of a disappointment.

With the exception of Lionel Messi, the only participant to have lived up to the hype was the Real Madrid coach, Jose Mario dos Santos Felix Mourinho, otherwise known as "the Special One".

Last week, Mourinho turned in one of those mesmerising performances from the side of the pitch that have made him the most talked-about non-sportsman in sport.

Bestriding his technical area like Olivier on stage at the Old Vic, by way of George Clooney on the red carpet, he unleashed his repertoire of magnetic mannerisms.

Head-shaking, face-pulling, winking: he aimed them all at the embattled fourth official after Madrid's Pepe had been sent off.

"Well done," said Mourinho, raising his thumbs in semaphored sarcasm.

For this act of insolence, he was sent to the stands, symbolically imprisoned behind bars, as he scribbled notes to his bench.

The Spanish TV director was understandably reluctant to return his cameras to the undistinguished game, while the Portuguese popinjay was fizzing in his theatrical pomp.

But that was only the beginning. After the match, which Real lost 2-0 - a 1-1 draw in the second leg in Barcelona this week sealed their exit - Mourinho gave a press conference in which he implied that European football's governing body, Uefa, had fixed the game, that several top referees were biased in favour of Barcelona and that a dark conspiracy was in train.

Vintage stuff, although even for Mourinho, who has turned the persecution complex into performance art, it verged on the excessive.

Was it sour grapes, a genuine complaint, a desperate attempt to distract the media from his team's shortcomings or merely the latest instalment of the epic psychological drama: Jose Mourinho against the world?

No one, perhaps not even Mourinho himself, can be sure of the answer, for as well as being among the world's most successful football coaches - and, arguably, the world's most successful sports coach - of recent times, he is also a highly public enigma. A rebel who wants to be loved, a brilliantly creative individual who specialises in producing relentlessly functional teams, a vanity project with mass appeal.

Seasoned observers like to think that Mourinho's every utterance is calculated for effect. Perhaps, but what effect? None of these antics will have endeared him to his employers, Real Madrid. The club likes to see itself as not just the aristocrat of football but a historic cultural institution. That's not the sort of image projected by Mourinho's assault on football's hierarchy.

No doubt the Madrid board, not renowned for its indulgence of coaches, might overlook such embarrassing behaviour if Real had actually beaten their hated rivals. But to lose - that's going to be a challenge for the coach to explain.

Yet not the least of his talents is the gift of the gab - in five languages. Mourinho's golden rule as a communicator is to speak the language of the host nation to the team and the language of the individual to each player. It seems to work. As Didier Drogba, the Chelsea forward, said: "He has a way of getting into players' minds."

It was Mourinho's linguistic ability that gave him his leg-up. Most successful managers and head coaches, with just a few exceptions, played at or around the top.

Mourinho, whose father was a goalkeeper who played once for the Portuguese national side, never made it as a footballer. He was too slow and lightweight and quit the game in his mid-20s. His mother came from a wealthy family and wanted him to attend business school, but he left after one day and instead studied sports science in Lisbon.

After graduating, he was a school PE teacher for five years. He then worked his way up from youth coach of his local club to assistant manager of a lowly Portuguese side. His breakthrough came when Bobby Robson employed him as his translator at Sporting Lisbon. From there, he followed Robson, first to Porto and then to Barcelona, taking on more and more coaching responsibilities.

He stayed on at Barcelona after Robson's departure, although he's still referred to dismissively in the Catalan media as the "translator". Returning to Portugal, he joined Benfica and eventually became head coach of Porto, a European backwater.

Yet rather as Brian Clough - to whom Mourinho is often compared - succeeded with humble Nottingham Forest, Mourinho made the small Portuguese club European champions in 2004.

He could have remained a local deity. As he said of his position in the town: "There is God, and after God, me." Instead, he answered the call of Roman Abramovich's chequebook and joined Chelsea.

The British media were not sure what to make of this swaggering ego with playboy looks. So he helped them at his introductory press conference. "I'm not one from the bottle - I'm a special one."

After that, and for the next three years, he annexed the back pages. If it's true that he used the media to wage psychological campaigns against officials, opposing managers and players, it's also clear these weekly diatribes were not simply about gaining an edge for his team. For it was apparent that Mourinho relished the attention for its own sake, taking joy in his eloquence and the effect it had on grateful, quote-starved reporters.

Discussing Chelsea's injury crisis, he said: "It is like having a blanket that is too small for the bed. You pull the blanket up to keep your chest warm and your feet stick out. I cannot buy a bigger blanket because the supermarket is closed.

"But I am content because the blanket is cashmere. It is no ordinary blanket." In a world dominated by mangled grammar and cliches, he was football's own poet in residence.

But, despite Mourinho's instant results - winning Chelsea's first championship in half a century and repeating the feat the following season - Abramovich was not as beguiled as the British press. It's said the Russian billionaire was dissatisfied with Mourinho's pragmatic style of football, which Real Madrid's Jorge Valdano compared to "shit hanging on a stick", and that there were disagreements about team selection.

"If Roman Abramovich helped me out in training, we would be bottom of the league," Mourinho quipped, "and if I had to work in his world of big business, we would be bankrupt." But when it came down to it, Stamford Bridge was not big enough for the both of them.

So he moved to Inter Milan in 2008, winning the Serie A championship and, more remarkably, the Champions League last year, beating Barcelona, the world's best team, along the way. That extraordinary deed persuaded Real Madrid, a club that's had more coaches than Warren Beatty has had girlfriends, to offer Mourinho a contract worth more than €10 million a season.

By most criteria, he's been a great success. Under his leadership, Madrid have built a magnificent winning record and he's taken them to the semifinals of the Champions League for the first time in years. The problem is there is only one criterion of success at Madrid - and that's doing better than Barcelona. In this, despite a recent Spanish Cup final victory, Mourinho has so far failed. Barcelona are set to win the Spanish league and knocked Real out of the Champions League, claiming a Wembley date with Manchester United.

There is no shame in that, because the current Barcelona have a strong claim to be the greatest in history. But if there's one person more intolerant of defeat than the Madrid board, it is Mourinho himself. He is the ultimate bad loser. He makes Arsene Wenger, whom he once denounced as a "voyeur", and his friend Sir Alex Ferguson seem like a pair of Corinthian gentlemen in defeat.

The loss he now faces, however, is his job. If he's sacked, it's rumoured he'll replace Sir Alex at United, where the board has a record of indulging managerial outbursts. Mourinho has spoken about moving to the States. But he's talked about moving everywhere. It's what he does, talk and move, talk and move.

So far it's been a winning formula. And while it may not lead to captivating football, the talking, moving Mourinho is always enthralling.

The Mourinho file

Born

January 26, 1963, Setubal, Portugal, to Jose Manuel Felix Mourinho, goalkeeper with Vitoria de Setubal, and Maria Julia Carrajola dos Santos, a teacher.

Best of times

Winning the treble, including the Champions League, with Porto in 2004. Winning Chelsea's first Premiership title in 2005, the Champions League with Inter Milan in 2010 and being voted world coach of the year.

Worst of times

Seeing Chelsea knocked out of the Champions League by Liverpool, thanks to a disputed goal Mourinho still maintains never crossed the line. Leaving Chelsea "by mutual agreement" in September 2007. His Real Madrid side losing 0-5 to Barcelona last year.

What he says

"I never forget my players are men. Men with different personalities ... to deal with this is very important in building a team. I think I have, maybe, a gift."

What others say

"He knows everything about the world and you can give a trophy for what he does off the pitch ... I try and learn from him on the pitch, not off of it." - Pep Guardiola, Barcelona coach

- Observer