How Mourinho can revive my passion for Manchester United & Football
“Football isn’t something that you can fake, it’s a feeling, a passion, a lifestyle. It’s an honest game and true to life.”
I’m watching my beloved football team winning, and I’ve got this strange feeling. I want them to lose. I’ve been supporting Manchester United for almost 40 years now, and I can’t ever remember feeling this way.I also can’t understand the indifference I’ve felt for them over the last 2-3 months.
Let’s get one thing clear, this football team; Manchester United is strongly etched on my heart. It’s not an ephemeral admiration with great sports teams or individuals. This is a relationship which has lasted longer than any other in my life.
I still remember the celebrations after winning the treble in 1999 with the ecstatic climax of scoring two winning goals in the last three minutes of the European Champions League final like it was yesterday. I recall, at sixteen, pleading with my parents to let me miss school the day after my team got thrashed 6-0 by Ipswich Town. How can I ever forget the pain and agony of paying a fortune to travel with my son and others to watch the Wembley mauling by Messi’s Barcelona?
Adopting a sports team, be it football, baseball or basketball is an inner need that dates back to our homo-sapiens origins. We all need to belong to some group where we can connect as a whole and feel this camaraderie that unfortunately goes missing in our lives.
We all need platforms where we can express our feelings and allow ourselves to get on an emotional roller coaster ride. We often aren’t able to do it in our personal lives or our professional lives, and therein starts our love affair with football.
Why then did I want them to lose? I was hoping that the hierarchy would finally wake up and recognise they had erred in hiring a robotic Dutch manager–Louis Van Gaal– and would sack him and replace him with one of my personal heroes–José Mourinho,who was suddenly on the market due to incredible circumstances.
Manchester United, with its rich history is arguably the biggest sports franchise in the world with throngs of fans spread out all over the globe: ranging from a small country like Malta to a big one like Malaysia. They have created a visceral bond with almost 800 million fans by becoming the patron saints for the expression of the heart.
It all started with the Busby Babes. On 6 February 1958, a charter plane, which carried 44 people crashed at the Munich Airport. The accident killed 23, and notable among these, were eight Manchester United players and three club officials.
The Manager, Sir Matt Busby, survived and like a phoenix birthed a team out of ashes. He went on to make them into serial and stylish winners and created an irreversible bond with the world.
When the Great Busby retired, the team lost its way and fallow years were to follow. There was a long period of nothingness, where they still had a name but were beaten more often than not. These were painful years that I had to endure while growing up in England especially when surrounded by the ABU (Anyone But United) crowd.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man–Sir Alex Ferguson. After almost 25 years of being in the wilderness, success finally came. SAF built a team based on the traditions and principles of Man United and went on to dominate the 1990’s till the day he announced his retirement in 2013 and handed the reigns to an inexperienced manager, David Moyes, who failed miserably and was sacked after only a year.
The fans and owners were afraid a similar fate will follow to what happened when Busby retired, where they had to wait for almost a quarter of a century to see the team lift trophies again. Louis Van Gaal was recruited to restore self-belief and a winning mentality to a group of players who had lost faith.
He came with a great CV; he had won titles and he was a disciplinarian with lots experience. However, he missed the most important criteria of being a Manchester United manager—the ability to allow players, staff and fans to express their feelings and emotions– to play the Man United way with passion and gusto and most of all to allow the players to reflect the fans’ feelings onto the pitch.
Man United had money to spend and afforded him a huge budget recruiting some good players, and when they finally recruited Angel Di Maria, a player who had passion, guile and was full of emotions, I had hope that this player had all the qualities of a United great.
However, Di Maria lasted only a year, becoming a shadow of his true self as he was disheartened by LVG’s philosophy-Players were asked to think and resist using their instinct. LVG epitomised his philosophy by sitting down taking notes while the action was happening a few metres in front of him during the heat of the battle.
The team performances turned from going all out to win to rather trying not to lose. It was slowly being transferred into the team’s ethos. They didn’t lose many games and would often scrape narrow wins, but there was something that just wasn’t right.
I would watch match after match hoping for a change, hoping to see a glimmer of the team’s true identity on the pitch but alas LVG had killed their passion, diminished their creativity and taught them to forget their hearts and instincts and rather focus on their minds.
Football to the real fans is not about solving an engineering problem or getting embroiled in a tactical chess game but a release from the vicissitudes of life. The fans want to breathe, dream and connect to a feeling of joy and hope. They want their hearts to sing, to cry and most of all to feel.
As fans, we had had enough of this hopelessness. Many of us found ourselves being torn between wanting to win the prestigious 2016 FA Cup final and risk LVG staying on as manager (thereby missing the opportunity of landing José Mourinho as our next manager) or losing the cup and ensuring that the hierarchy sacked LVG.
This wasn’t something personal against LVG, but it was much grander. How dare he and the owners forget the golden rule of fans–We watch so that we are emotionally moved. In good times or in bad times, we need to express our subdued feelings.
On Saturday 21st May 2016, I got a text that according to BBC’s Breaking News, Louis Van Gaal would be sacked and replaced by Mourinho. It was a double celebration winning the cup and landing Mourinho. I was emotional and surprised at the depth of my emotions. I was taken aback by my buried frustrations.
José Mourinho boasts an impressive pedigree during his years as a manager, winning nearly every major European title from the Champions League to Series A to the UEFA Cup, 22 titles in total. He is regarded by a number of players, coaches, and commentators as one of the greatest and most successful managers in the world. He is very charismatic, pragmatic and always carries with him a certain wow factor.
I know deep in my heart that Jose Mourinho and Manchester United are a match made in heaven. He is the man to restore back our dignity, our spirit and our identity. How we win and when we win is not the point but what is important is that we regain our identity.
Jose Mourinho is a coach who splits opinion as you either love him or hate him and that for me is the clue. Love and hate are emotions and all I want to be as a fan is to get on that emotional roller coaster and start feeling again.