Carneiro, trequarista Mour nemesis

Exchange: Dr Carneiro (L) claims that she ‘clearly heard’ Jose call her a ‘daughter of a whore’ as she ran onto the pitch in an incident that led to this touchline row, and eventually her exit from the club. PHOTO BY AFP

Joseph Felix Mourinho is an elite football coach. Few doubt that. Only Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola can match his record of success over the last decade. You will say it is easy for me to say since I am a Chelsea fan. It is not. Why?
I have been consumed by a near obsessive desire to what drove Chelsea to terminate his services just seven months after he won the English Premier League title. I think I have found the answer. Dr Eva Carneiro and trequartista.
Carneiro accused Mourinho of using the derogatory words ‘filha da puta’ which is Portuguese for ‘daughter of a whore’. The Manchester United manager says he did not use those words. But I had always wondered why the sports doctor had felt so affronted. It turns out those are Mourinho’s favourite swear words. He says he uses them just like an English speaker would use ‘son of a bitch’.

As a trained psychologist, Mourinho should know better than anyone else, you cannot swear ‘filha da puta’, week in week out, to such highly paid professionals.
From reading reports of the Dr Carneiro settlement, it is clear
1- a bond broke between Mourinho and his players following the Caneiro
2- The players must have woken up to the realisation their coach was using a hitherto unknown derogatory term to describe them.
To cut a long story short; Chelsea under-performed spectacularly last year because the players rebelled against Mourinho. You have to hope he learned his lessons and has expunged ‘filha da puta’ from his touchline lingua franca.

Secondly, Mourinho’s two exits from Chelsea have coincided with the failure to utilise a trequartista. You may ask; ‘but what is a trequartista?’
Trequartista is Italian for a creative, technical, advanced playmaker. Sometimes they are referred to as ‘famtastista’. ‘Trequartistas are traditionally free to play as free as they like. Their job is to both score goals and create goal scoring opportunities for others. They traditionally have zero defensive responsibilities’. I understand the football equivalent of such a player is called ‘meia atacante’ in Brazile while in Argentina he is referred to as ‘enganche’.

Back to Mourinho. Contrary to the widespread perception that Mourinho is a nomadic manager who cannot settle in one job beyond three years, I think his refusal to believe any player should have zero defensive responsibility is a central feature of his early departures. In his first Chelsea spell, he was at odds with Arjen Robben for his failure to master the defensive part of his game. I strongly believe that if the flying Dutch winger had not been replaced by the duplicate version called Florent Malouda, Mourinho would have won double the three EPL titles he clinched with Chelsea.
Mourinho’s final weeks at Chelsea, meanwhile, coincided with a fall out with Eden Hazard. You will recall that in the 2014-15 season, the Portuguese had blamed Hazard for failing to track back in the lead up to Atletico Madrid’s decisive equalising goal.

In the final weeks of his Chelsea tenure, he said Hazard was not a real number 10 capable of controlling a game like Deco did for him at FC Porto and Wesley Sneijder at Inter Milan in his Champions League winning years.
In the final analysis, all managers must continue learning. In Mourinho’s case, he ought to appreciate that there is no such a thing as a luxury player. If Robben or Hazard are destroying defences for you, there is absolutely no need for finger pointing.
They are hardly ‘luxury players’. They are the team’s most important players, the heartbeat.