I love this analysis...classical... Mourinho took risks at the right time By Gabriele Marcotti | April 9, 2014 12:17:07 PM PDT “Andre Schuerrle comes on and scores ... Demba Ba comes on and scores ... what do you call that?” “Luck!” That was the exchange between an Italian television reporter and Jose Mourinho moments after Chelsea’s 2-0 victory versus Paris Saint-Germain, which saw them advance to the semifinal of the Champions League. (Well, sort of. Because Mourinho didn’t say “luck.” Instead, he used an Italian expression which, at once, refers both to good fortune and a body part most people keep covered most of the time.) That’s the thing about this sport. It’s low-scoring, which means individual errors or strokes of misfortune can have an outsized effect. It’s nine-ball pool: sink the first eight flawlessly -- but mess up the ninth -- and you lose. Mourinho is often described as a Machiavellian uber-pragmatist, with ends justifying means, maybe with a bit of Che Guevara (“Hasta la victoria, siempre!”) and Malcolm X (“By any means necessary”) thrown in. But perhaps Tuesday night was more about one of Machiavelli’s favorite subjects -- fortune -- and how, when she turns up, you need to be ready to grab her and bend her to your will. The Ancient Greeks had their own term, Caerus, who was the embodiment of the moment in time when something can be possible. Caerus was a fellow with a flowing long lock of hair just above his forehead, but who was otherwise bald. The idea was that you had to grab him by the hair as soon as he materialized: get your timing wrong and you’d end up pawing the smooth, hairless back of his head and he would get away. Against PSG, when Caerus turned up, Mourinho seized his lock of hair before he could escape. This doesn’t mean, by any stretch, that it was an undeserved win. FULL COVERAGE: - Delaney: Mourinhos tactical triumph - Brewin: Three Things - Chelsea vs. PSG - Worrall: Ba triggers Bridge frenzy - Johnson: PSGs profligacy and inexperience Quite the opposite. You want to count Edinson Cavani’s brain freeze when he had PSG’s best chance in the “for” column? Along with Samuel Eto’o’s blocked shot pinballing “just so” to Cesar Azpilicueta, whose finish squirmed to the exact place where Ba was lying in wait? Maybe even the Rory Delap-inspired first goal: throw-in, carom off David Luiz’s back and comfortable Schuerrle finish? Fine. But weigh it up against the times the gods appeared to conspire against Chelsea. Like the two shots off the crossbar or the moment Mourinho saw his best player, Eden Hazard, limp off after 18 minutes. No, luck was intermittent in powering the hosts at Stamford Bridge. The difference is that, when it did show up, Mourinho went all Guicciardini and grabbed its hair with both hands. His opposite number, Laurent Blanc, did not. Furthermore, Mourinho was able to do this because he gambled at the right time and in the right way. By the time Hazard went off in the 18th minute, PSG’s game plan was obvious: clog the middle, sit back and unleash the roadrunners -- Ezequiel Lavezzi and Lucas Moura -- on the counter. With PSG defending narrow, Chelsea’s manager could have pushed on his fullbacks and looked for crosses, even if meant leaving space for Lavezzi and Lucas on the break. It would have been a gamble, a calculated risk. But that wasn’t the time to gamble. Instead, he kept the back four (back six if you count David Luiz and Frank Lampard) in position to ward off the threat of the counter and relied on his attacking midfielders switching positions, cutting inside, raising the tempo and winning free kicks, knowing that Chelsea had a sizeable edge on set pieces. (And, indeed, that’s how they scored.) 1-0 up at the interval, Mourinho hoped to score early in the second half and Chelsea nearly did, hitting the crossbar twice. He knew he had to gamble, but he waited until 24 minutes from time -- “When I came to realize just how tired Lavezzi and Lucas were, after we’d managed to wear them out” he would say later -- to throw on Ba and then, 15 minutes later, ratchet it up further with Fernando Torres. At that stage Chelsea had a virtual 4-2-4, which isn’t rocket science when chasing a game. In fact, it’s what a kid on a PlayStation would do. The difference though was the timing. Ba’s entrance prompted Lavezzi’s replacement with Javier Pastore, a player who could keep the ball but who would not be a threat on the counter. Torres prompted Lucas’ exit for a defender -- Marquinhos -- which left Cavani on his own. And the bombardment began. “At that stage, they were no longer playing like Chelsea, they were playing like Crystal Palace, launching balls into crowded areas, looking for knockdowns and ricochets,” said Marco Materazzi, a guy who knows Mourinho rather well. “It wasn’t pretty but it was exactly the thing to do to give yourself a chance. Don’t mess with crosses or interplay, get it in there, you have a physical edge; you have fresh strikers against tired defenders. That’s what he does so well. Simple plans at the right time and with players fully committed to them.” Make no mistake about it, it was still a gamble. Mourinho himself admitted that, with Chelsea ahead 1-0, he approached Claude Makelele, his former player and now an assistant at PSG, and said: “The way this game is going now there will definitely be another goal. It won’t finish 1-0. Either we score to make it 2-0 or you equalize and we’re out. No other way.” And it still needed luck, both with Cavani’s miss and Ba’s goal. But the point is that what we call luck is basically probability. You can’t make your luck (despite the cliche) but you can increase the chances that fortune will manifest itself. That is what Mourinho did on the night, playing the percentages at the right time. That’s what a good gambler does. He accepts that he needs to take risks and that those risks may end in spectacular failure. And he knows when and how to take them, knowing that it won’t always work and you can be made to look foolish. But if, when you’re in gambler mode, you can win more than you lose, you come out ahead.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 05:11:48 +0000
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