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Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner
Mourinho Further Anatomy of a Winner
322 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 2011
15 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Barclay
18 books7 followersPatrick Barclay was a British journalist and sportswriter.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 13, 2016
سيرة أحد اهم الشخصيات الرياضية في السنوات الأخيرة، مليئة بالحكم والعبر والدروس. ممتع ومفيد
January 24, 2026
I prefer not to review. If I review, I am in big trouble.
December 24, 2020
Warning: This comes from a Chelsea fan who started following football & the club because of this man.
This was the first book [among many that have been written] of Jose Mourinho that I've read. I loved the book because of multiple things:
- It backs up claims with data.
When Patrick says "Mou is a harsh critic & demands the best out of his team" - he recounts Mou's words when Porto was playing against big teams or Chelsea/Inter for that matter.
"Mou is a family man" - Patric gives us a sneakpeek into Mou's social life and his distaste for "social interactions" outside football; Mou's Christmas-time ice skating session with his family; so on...
- It's a proper football book.
Ofcourse football is the central theme. It's interesting how much Sir Alex played a role in shaping Mourinho as much as LVG, Sir Bobby Robson [his mentors]. His respect for Alex shows Mou knows what class is and appreciates it.
Unknown tidbit:
Coaching Portuguese national side is one thing Mou wants to do before hanging his boots [or more so his coaching hat].
All in all, I loved the book & breezed past it in 4 days... [personal win!]
This was the first book [among many that have been written] of Jose Mourinho that I've read. I loved the book because of multiple things:
- It backs up claims with data.
When Patrick says "Mou is a harsh critic & demands the best out of his team" - he recounts Mou's words when Porto was playing against big teams or Chelsea/Inter for that matter.
"Mou is a family man" - Patric gives us a sneakpeek into Mou's social life and his distaste for "social interactions" outside football; Mou's Christmas-time ice skating session with his family; so on...
- It's a proper football book.
Ofcourse football is the central theme. It's interesting how much Sir Alex played a role in shaping Mourinho as much as LVG, Sir Bobby Robson [his mentors]. His respect for Alex shows Mou knows what class is and appreciates it.
Unknown tidbit:
Coaching Portuguese national side is one thing Mou wants to do before hanging his boots [or more so his coaching hat].
All in all, I loved the book & breezed past it in 4 days... [personal win!]
December 16, 2023
Super interesting book about the genius Manager himself. Here are the best bits:
the words of Albert Einstein - that the only force that is more powerful than steam, electricity or atomic energy is the human will. And that guy Albert is not stupid.'
I had never been a first-class player who could feel, for example, what Figo had felt upon returning to Barcelona [with Real Madrid], and so! had no idea what it would be like to have 80,000 people whistling and jeering at me. I believe that, when we are mentally strong, those people who seek to intimidate and disturb us have exactly the opposite effect. Upon hearing the whistles and jeers
• •• I felt as if I were the
most important person in the world.'
Mourinho wanted only players willing to gear everything, including their social lives, to the demands of success.
It was always like this in the field of youth development: even the most gifted need an inner drive.
In the second of those years, Mourinho worked with the first team. 'I like to give responsibility to my assist-ants,' said Van Gaal. 'I like them to take all or part of a training session because, if the head coach trains the players all the time, in the end they stop listening to you.
A coach has to observe and correct, but there is only so much correcting you can do before, psychologically, they switch off. So sometimes I like to stand back.
When Roxburgh visited Mourinho at Chelsea in 2005, Mourinho made a wry quip: 'After fifteen years, I'm an overnight success.' The UEFA technical director under-stood. It is less important for a coach setting out on his career to be instantly recognisable to millions than to have learned the elements of his craft. The fame and fortune that go with being a star footballer can mask an inability to cope with the retraining process. Mourinho was once asked why so many players who had failed to reach a high level, either through injury or for other reasons, went on to succeed as coaches. His reply was swift and simple: 'More time to study?' While the game's chosen ones are still playing, the rejects are learning and, increasingly, they are landing the top jobs.
Houllier loves to quote Sacchi on this topic. Asked how he could coach without having played, the Italian replied: I didn't realise you had to have been a horse to Be a jockey
Rui Faria, would rarely work detached from the coaching itself. He would stand beside José and advise him on decisions about when to extend the pitch or widen it, or highlight a certain aspect, or increase the intensity of an exercise, change the speed, make it two-touch or whatever. Everything was done together.
A proverb adapted from Thomas Carlyle states that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, and while it might not be universally applicable in football, the career of Sir Alex Ferguson certainly evokes it. So do aspects of Mourinho's career. On the one hand, there is the occasional detractor like my friend who considers him a painter by numbers. On the other, there is a regiment of admirers such as José Manuel Capristano who, when vice-president of Benfica, initially regarded Mourinho as too inexperienced to handle the first team but was won over in a matter of weeks and exclaimed: "That man was born to be a coach. I have never met anyone like him in my life. He thinks twenty-four hours a day.' Or Deco, who has said: 'Maybe other coaches have the same quality as Mourinho - but nobody works as hard as him.' Roxburgh recognised that reluctance to leave a stone unturned. 'I must have said it a thousand times.
The guys I deal with, either the national coaches or the top club guys, are obsessed with detail. That's what makes them different. Louis van Gaal, for example. I remember him coming to one of our meetings - he was at Barcelona with José at the time - and complaining that, in the Champions League, the gap in time between the warm-up and the kick-off was too long.
Ability to deliver a pass, and the ability to deliver a message: these are completely different things.
You have to build and maintain three teams: the team that is playing, the team that is not playing and the team behind the team.
Argentine, though, was to be the subject of a joint reappraisal. When the players reported for duty at the old Imperial College training ground, Crespo was a notable and unexplained exception. When they were handed Mourinho's guide to behaviour and ethos, the copy intended for Crespo went unclaimed. From here, each practice, each game, each minute of your social life must centre on the aim of being champions,' it read, ending with a line that might have come from Lord Kitchener: 'I need all of you.'
David Moyes suddenly grinned. 'What Mourinho's done,' said the Everton manager, is make coaching sexy?' He was alluding less to his rival's good looks than to a tendency to use fancy words and phrases to describe his methods. One of these is 'guided discovery', by which Mourinho means that players at a certain level must be led gently to lessons rather than told what to do; it is an approach he learned at Barcelona,
We go for quality and high intensity during short periods. Players want to work, whether it is in Portugal, England or Spain, as long as the training is well organised and serious and they know the purpose of the exercise.
In Tel Aviv, Mourinho told his audience: 'A great pianist doesn't run around the piano or do push-ups with the tips of his fingers. To be great, he plays the piano. He plays all his life and being a great footballer is not about running, push-ups or physical work generally. The best way to be a great player is to play football.'
Transitions have become crucial. When the opponent is organised defensively, it is very difficult to score. The moment the opponent loses the ball can be the time to exploit the opportunity of someone being out of position. Similarly, when we lose the ball, we must react immediately.
He has an almost quaint liking for pen and paper.
Everything he has done in his coaching career, from day one with the youths at Vitória Setúbal, has been written in notebooks and retained.
One translates as "Tell Deco I'm pissed off - I want more', another as 'Pressure on lines-man, everybody. While the latter confirms Mourinho is a psychological warrior, it is almost standard coaching practice to order your players to chip away at match officials in the hope of obtaining a marginal decision sooner or later.
'When I go to a press conference before a game, in my mind the game has already started. When Igo to a press conference after the game, the game hasn't finished yet.
The Portuguese, to generalise, are often quite passive people, so much so that in such fields as marketing and the media many key positions in the country came to be occupied by Brazilians; in 2004 the trend even manifested itself in football when Portugal hosted the European Championship and the Brazilian Scolari was in charge of their team.
The phenomenon is known as reverse colonisation'.
Frank Clark was brought to Nottingham almost as soon as Clough arrived, from Newcastle United, where he had been captain. He was thirty-one and dropping a division and could not even have dreamed he would be a European champion when his career ended in a haze of champagne four years later. But it happened. Forest were promoted in his second season, champions of England the next season and champions of Europe the season after that. They were to retain the European title, too, after Clark had retired and been replaced by Frank Gray. In the league table of footballing fairy tales, then, Cloughs Forest will always stand above even Mourinho's Porto.
An insight into the special relationship between Jose, Mourinho and players had earlier been given by Snyder when he said: once he told me, Wesley, you look tired, take some days off, go to the son with your wife and daughter. All other coaches just talked about training but he sent me to the beach. So I went to Ibiza for three days and when I was back, I was ready to kill and die for him.
the words of Albert Einstein - that the only force that is more powerful than steam, electricity or atomic energy is the human will. And that guy Albert is not stupid.'
I had never been a first-class player who could feel, for example, what Figo had felt upon returning to Barcelona [with Real Madrid], and so! had no idea what it would be like to have 80,000 people whistling and jeering at me. I believe that, when we are mentally strong, those people who seek to intimidate and disturb us have exactly the opposite effect. Upon hearing the whistles and jeers
• •• I felt as if I were the
most important person in the world.'
Mourinho wanted only players willing to gear everything, including their social lives, to the demands of success.
It was always like this in the field of youth development: even the most gifted need an inner drive.
In the second of those years, Mourinho worked with the first team. 'I like to give responsibility to my assist-ants,' said Van Gaal. 'I like them to take all or part of a training session because, if the head coach trains the players all the time, in the end they stop listening to you.
A coach has to observe and correct, but there is only so much correcting you can do before, psychologically, they switch off. So sometimes I like to stand back.
When Roxburgh visited Mourinho at Chelsea in 2005, Mourinho made a wry quip: 'After fifteen years, I'm an overnight success.' The UEFA technical director under-stood. It is less important for a coach setting out on his career to be instantly recognisable to millions than to have learned the elements of his craft. The fame and fortune that go with being a star footballer can mask an inability to cope with the retraining process. Mourinho was once asked why so many players who had failed to reach a high level, either through injury or for other reasons, went on to succeed as coaches. His reply was swift and simple: 'More time to study?' While the game's chosen ones are still playing, the rejects are learning and, increasingly, they are landing the top jobs.
Houllier loves to quote Sacchi on this topic. Asked how he could coach without having played, the Italian replied: I didn't realise you had to have been a horse to Be a jockey
Rui Faria, would rarely work detached from the coaching itself. He would stand beside José and advise him on decisions about when to extend the pitch or widen it, or highlight a certain aspect, or increase the intensity of an exercise, change the speed, make it two-touch or whatever. Everything was done together.
A proverb adapted from Thomas Carlyle states that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, and while it might not be universally applicable in football, the career of Sir Alex Ferguson certainly evokes it. So do aspects of Mourinho's career. On the one hand, there is the occasional detractor like my friend who considers him a painter by numbers. On the other, there is a regiment of admirers such as José Manuel Capristano who, when vice-president of Benfica, initially regarded Mourinho as too inexperienced to handle the first team but was won over in a matter of weeks and exclaimed: "That man was born to be a coach. I have never met anyone like him in my life. He thinks twenty-four hours a day.' Or Deco, who has said: 'Maybe other coaches have the same quality as Mourinho - but nobody works as hard as him.' Roxburgh recognised that reluctance to leave a stone unturned. 'I must have said it a thousand times.
The guys I deal with, either the national coaches or the top club guys, are obsessed with detail. That's what makes them different. Louis van Gaal, for example. I remember him coming to one of our meetings - he was at Barcelona with José at the time - and complaining that, in the Champions League, the gap in time between the warm-up and the kick-off was too long.
Ability to deliver a pass, and the ability to deliver a message: these are completely different things.
You have to build and maintain three teams: the team that is playing, the team that is not playing and the team behind the team.
Argentine, though, was to be the subject of a joint reappraisal. When the players reported for duty at the old Imperial College training ground, Crespo was a notable and unexplained exception. When they were handed Mourinho's guide to behaviour and ethos, the copy intended for Crespo went unclaimed. From here, each practice, each game, each minute of your social life must centre on the aim of being champions,' it read, ending with a line that might have come from Lord Kitchener: 'I need all of you.'
David Moyes suddenly grinned. 'What Mourinho's done,' said the Everton manager, is make coaching sexy?' He was alluding less to his rival's good looks than to a tendency to use fancy words and phrases to describe his methods. One of these is 'guided discovery', by which Mourinho means that players at a certain level must be led gently to lessons rather than told what to do; it is an approach he learned at Barcelona,
We go for quality and high intensity during short periods. Players want to work, whether it is in Portugal, England or Spain, as long as the training is well organised and serious and they know the purpose of the exercise.
In Tel Aviv, Mourinho told his audience: 'A great pianist doesn't run around the piano or do push-ups with the tips of his fingers. To be great, he plays the piano. He plays all his life and being a great footballer is not about running, push-ups or physical work generally. The best way to be a great player is to play football.'
Transitions have become crucial. When the opponent is organised defensively, it is very difficult to score. The moment the opponent loses the ball can be the time to exploit the opportunity of someone being out of position. Similarly, when we lose the ball, we must react immediately.
He has an almost quaint liking for pen and paper.
Everything he has done in his coaching career, from day one with the youths at Vitória Setúbal, has been written in notebooks and retained.
One translates as "Tell Deco I'm pissed off - I want more', another as 'Pressure on lines-man, everybody. While the latter confirms Mourinho is a psychological warrior, it is almost standard coaching practice to order your players to chip away at match officials in the hope of obtaining a marginal decision sooner or later.
'When I go to a press conference before a game, in my mind the game has already started. When Igo to a press conference after the game, the game hasn't finished yet.
The Portuguese, to generalise, are often quite passive people, so much so that in such fields as marketing and the media many key positions in the country came to be occupied by Brazilians; in 2004 the trend even manifested itself in football when Portugal hosted the European Championship and the Brazilian Scolari was in charge of their team.
The phenomenon is known as reverse colonisation'.
Frank Clark was brought to Nottingham almost as soon as Clough arrived, from Newcastle United, where he had been captain. He was thirty-one and dropping a division and could not even have dreamed he would be a European champion when his career ended in a haze of champagne four years later. But it happened. Forest were promoted in his second season, champions of England the next season and champions of Europe the season after that. They were to retain the European title, too, after Clark had retired and been replaced by Frank Gray. In the league table of footballing fairy tales, then, Cloughs Forest will always stand above even Mourinho's Porto.
An insight into the special relationship between Jose, Mourinho and players had earlier been given by Snyder when he said: once he told me, Wesley, you look tired, take some days off, go to the son with your wife and daughter. All other coaches just talked about training but he sent me to the beach. So I went to Ibiza for three days and when I was back, I was ready to kill and die for him.
February 22, 2013
I'm not a follower of football but this guys ability to inspire loyalty and performance fascinates me. You get some insight of that in this book but its buried amongst the history of his teams performances.
August 22, 2025
Interesting and readable with some nice anecdotes that I wasn’t aware of before about Mourinho.
The structure of the book felt messy, though. And I didn’t love the prose, I often had to re-read sentence aloud to understand them.
The structure of the book felt messy, though. And I didn’t love the prose, I often had to re-read sentence aloud to understand them.
June 8, 2022
Mou is not such an evil man at all ...
January 13, 2019
A decent book from a highly esteemed football writer in Patrick Barclay. He provides a deep account into the mind of one of the game’s greatest modern coaches and how he became such a phenomenon. The chapters on Mourinho’s relationship and mentoring from the late Sir Bobby Robson were particularly brilliant. However, would like to have seen slightly more focus on Mourinho’s glory at Inter Milan yet I understand this would probably be better served by an Italian journalist or football writer! Would recommend for sure.
July 5, 2018
เขียนโดยคุณ Patrick Barclay ครับ สไตล์การเขียนอ่านยากครับ คือถ้าไม่คอยเปิด fixtures ของแต่ละสโมสรที่พีแกพยายามจะเขียนถึงก็มีงงอ่ะครับ เล่มนี้ทำให้รู้ข้อมูลประวัติของ Mourinho สมัยเด็กและบทสัมภาษณ์ของ Bobby Robson และคนที่ Mourinho เคยทำงานด้วยอีกสองสามคน นอกนั้นก็ไม่ค่อยจะมีอะไรอ่ะนะ
บางช่วนบางตอนผู้เขียน "แถ" ด้วยนะฮะ ตามไปบ่นใน amazon ละฮะ 555
บางช่วนบางตอนผู้เขียน "แถ" ด้วยนะฮะ ตามไปบ่นใน amazon ละฮะ 555
June 23, 2016
The boy Barclay's has done well here. After a couple of defensive lapses [monumental typos. Proof reader hang your head in shame!] the lad's improved his concentration and made a decent attempt to unravel the 'Special One's' success. What he lacks in ability [insights from Mourinho himself], he's made up for in effort [contributions from talking heads]. In a game of two halves the boy has largely avoided clichés, but has still failed to penetrate the subject's tactical nous. Obviously, as I say, the lad is pleased with his performance but hoped for more as a 0-0 draw leaves his team mid-table. Olé, olé, olé, olé. Olé!
April 24, 2014
مورينهو شخصية مميزة لكن هذا الكتاب ما يرقى لمناقشة شخصية مثله
اسلوب الكتابة مباشر وعادي..شخصيا شدتني المراحل الاولى من مشواره مع بوبي روبسون..تجربته في الاكاديمية التدريبية في اسكتلندا..فترته في التدريس الأكاديمي في الجامعة..اهتمامه الشديد بمحاضرات العلم النفسي في دراسته..مراحل تكوين مورينهو الاولى قبل استلامه لتشيلسي..وبعدها اغلب الفصول تناقش امور معروفة للصحافة
نقطة ثانية ان الكتاب يفتقد لاي اقتباس من مورينهو لأنه ما أذن للكاتب بتأليفه..فهو تجميع معرفي ونقاش مع بعض الشخصيات حوله
الأفضل انتظار كتاب مورينهو الشخصي والي بينزل هذا العام
اسلوب الكتابة مباشر وعادي..شخصيا شدتني المراحل الاولى من مشواره مع بوبي روبسون..تجربته في الاكاديمية التدريبية في اسكتلندا..فترته في التدريس الأكاديمي في الجامعة..اهتمامه الشديد بمحاضرات العلم النفسي في دراسته..مراحل تكوين مورينهو الاولى قبل استلامه لتشيلسي..وبعدها اغلب الفصول تناقش امور معروفة للصحافة
نقطة ثانية ان الكتاب يفتقد لاي اقتباس من مورينهو لأنه ما أذن للكاتب بتأليفه..فهو تجميع معرفي ونقاش مع بعض الشخصيات حوله
الأفضل انتظار كتاب مورينهو الشخصي والي بينزل هذا العام
June 24, 2016
well I thought this book was a loud of rubbish. Hardly looked into the anatomy of a winner. Poorly written as it kept jumping from different years and teams and different people, was hard to keep up with where the book was. Much of the book is hearsay and I don't think any of it came from Mourinho. Took me ages to read cos it was just quite honestly boring
January 9, 2016
Truly this is the anatomy of a winner. My favorite football manager.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews