Image 1 Jose Mourinho at a Manchester United press conference [1]
Jose Mourinho is with no doubt one of the greatest manager in soccer history but recently he has been widely criticized for having a boring tactical gameplay with Man Utd. Even more importantly, he has been criticized for not winning enough games with Man U ( Man City, one of Man Utd biggest rival is on top of the Premier League table). It seems more and more managers know how to handle Jose Mourinho tactical gameplay but the question is why? In this post, we will review and discuss some of the Jose Mourinho's team line-up with his two first clubs: FC Porto and Chelsea.
Image 1 Jose Mourinho at a Chelsea game [2]
"Please don't call me arrogant, but I'm European champion and I think I'm a special one. We have top players and, sorry if I'm arrogant, we have a top manager." Jose Mourinho, Chelsea Press Conference, 2004 [3]
FC Porto
I still remember watching the FC Porto 2004 when I was a teenager, and it was quite a fantastic team, in fact never boring! The team was not having possession of the ball for too long but when they had it, you could be sure that something was going to happen. FC Porto was playing with two forwards that were very fast and had a good technique: Derlei and Carlos Alberto. In fact, they were not really center forwards in my opinion, as they spent a great deal of time on the wings. Jose Mourinho was using 4 players in a diamond middlefield kind of system: Deco, Maniche, Pedro Mendes and Costinha. Deco was quite an elegant player and was really the playmaker of the team. He always knew were his teammates were on the field and with his passing abilities he made counterattacks very fast and fluid. Maniche, Pedro and Costinha were very good at endurance, and thus they were helping the defenders a great deal, in case the team did not have the ball. The 4 defenders were: Valente, Carvalho, Costa and Ferreira. All of them were very disciplined defenders, not bad when driving the ball, but their first task was to defend well (especially Carvalho and Costa) . Valente and Ferreira were going up a lot though, in case the team was having possession of the ball. Victor Baia was the goalkeeper. The figure below summarizes Jose Mourinho tactical system in FC Porto
Figure 1 Jose Mourinho tactic lineup at FC Porto (2004)
Chelsea
In Chelsea, Jose Mourinho organized his team completely differently. He usually used a 4-5-1. He usually was playing with a center forward very strong physically and very tall (Didier Drogba in 2004-2007 and Diego Costa in 2014-2015). He used extremely fast wingers ( Duff and Robben in the earlier years and Hazard and Schurle in the later years). Also, with the middlefielders that he used, the team was not pressing the ball as high on the pitch compared with the FC Porto. This caused Chelsea games to be sometimes boring (I remember Chelsea vs Ahletico Madrid). The next figures summarize Jose Mourinho tactics with Chelsea.
Figure 2 Jose Mourinho tactic lineup at Chelsea (2004-2007)
Figure 3 Jose Mourinho tactic lineup at Chelsea (2014-2015)
Conclusion
Jose Mourinho is one of the best managers for implementing counter attack practice. Over the years people have found his gameplay boring but perhaps he could reuse a system similar to the one he is used in Porto for his current team Manchester United? What do you guys think? Let me know in the comment section below.
Thank you for reading my post,
juv79505
References
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:José_Mourinho
[2] https://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/premier-league/2012-2013/in-depth-can-jose-mourinho-bring-long-term-success-to-chelsea_sto4704049/story.shtml
[3] http://www.fifa.com/news/y=2009/m=2/news=-1033132.html
Note that images [1] and [2] were labeled for reused with modification