Mourinho Delivers a Special One 101

December 11th, 2007 | by: Daryl | View Comments

After dangling himself in front of England for the last couple of weeks, like a donut just out of Homer Simpson’s reach (and making the English media drool accordingly) Jose Mourinho has finally himself unavailable for work yesterday afternoon. Proof indeed that the essence of being The Special One is the essence of “what if?” What if Mourinho had remained at Porto? What if Roman Abramovich hadn’t interrupted his spell at Chelsea? What if he’d resurrected England? We’ll never know, which is sort of the point.

The man is a public relations genius and will probably enjoy the big job he’s positioned himself for at AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid or some other highly paid and high profile club job infinitely more than he would have trying to teach Stewart Downing do a trick. Which leaves all the other highly qualified foreigners who actually want the job.

Two of those men are Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi. Both eminently qualified, both at the stage of life where international management would suit them nicely. The media seem to think Capello is the favourite, but then they thought Mourinho was the favourite until yesterday.

One odd aspect is the question marks over both Capello and Lippi’s ability to speak English. I’ve heard and read various reports that both men speak perfect English and equally that neither speak a word. Intuition tells me to go somewhere in between and assume that both speak a respectable amount. Not that that’s a positive. Did anyone else notice that as Sven’s English vocabulary increased his results got worse?