Interesting, but long read: Zlatan Ibrahimovic on Jose Mourinho: Already during the 2008 European Championship I was told that Mourinho, my new manager at Inter Milan, was going to phone me, and I thought: ‘Has something happened?’ He just wanted to say: ‘It’ll be nice to work together, looking forward to meeting you’ — nothing remarkable, but he was speaking in Italian. I didn’t get it. Mourinho had never coached an Italian club. But he spoke the language better than me! He’d learned the language in three weeks, I couldn’t keep up. We switched to English, and then I could sense it: this guy cares. After the match against Spain I got a text message. ‘Well played,’ he wrote, and then gave me some advice and I stopped in my tracks. I’d never had that before. A text message from the coach! I’d been playing with the Swedish squad, which was nothing to do with him. Still, he got involved. I felt appreciated. Sure, I understood he was sending those texts for a reason. He wanted my loyalty, but I liked him straight away. He works twice as hard as all the rest. Lives and breathes football 24/7. I’ve never met a manager with that kind of knowledge about the opposing sides. It was everything, right down to the third-choice goalkeeper’s shoe size. It was a while before I met him. He’s elegant, he’s confident, but I was surprised. He looked small next to the players but I sensed it immediately: there was this vibe around him. He got people to toe the line, and he went up to guys who thought they were untouchable and let them have it. He stood there, only coming up to their shoulder, and didn’t try to suck up to them. He got straight to the point: ‘From now on, you do it like this.’ Can you imagine! And everybody started to listen. They strained to take in every shade of meaning in what he was saying. Not that they were frightened of him. He was no Fabio Capello, who was a demon manager. Mourinho created personal ties with the players with his text messages and his knowledge of our situations with wives and children, and he didn’t shout. He built us up before matches. It was like theatre, a psychological game. He might show videos where we’d played badly and say: ‘So miserable! Hopeless! Those guys can’t be you. They must be your brothers, your inferior selves,’ and we nodded. We were ashamed. ‘I don’t want to see you like that today,’ he would continue. ‘No way,’ we thought. ‘Go out there like hungry lions,’ he added. ‘In the first battle you’ll be like this . . . ’ He pounded his fist against the palm of his open hand. ‘And in the second battle . . . ’ He gave the flip chart a kick and sent it flying across the room, and the adrenaline pumped inside us, and we went out like rabid animals. I felt increasingly that this guy gives everything for the team, so I want to give everything for him. People were willing to kill for him. There was one thing that really bothered me: no matter what I did, there was never any hint of a smile. I was doing totally amazing things, but Mourinho had a face like a wet weekend. One time we were playing Bologna and I scored a goal that was absolutely insane. It was later voted goal of the year. Mourinho stood there stony-faced. What the hell is it with that man? I thought. If he doesn’t react to a thing like that, what does get him going? One way or another, I was going to make that man cheer. It happened, but only once we had won three titles and I was top goalscorer. Mourinho, the man with the face of stone, the man who never batted an eyelid, had woken up. He was like a madman. He was cheering like a schoolboy, jumping up and down, and I smiled: ‘So I got you going, after all. But it took some doing.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 07:54:36 +0000
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