Jose Mourinho is alone.
His players are collecting their toiletry kits. A floor below him, the bar has a decent pre-dinner crowd with a festive energy. (Happy Birthday, Maureen!) Outside, the Manchester United bus idles beside a few dozen fans hoping to catch a glimpse of someone famous.
Mourinho waits. He always appears tiny next to his players (he prefers the tallest he can find), but even on his own, left leg crossed over right and hands at the back of an ever-graying head of close-cropped hair, Mourinho’s 5-foot-9 frame is wiry — a popsicle stick in track-suit bottoms.
A rent-a-cop stands by the elevator. A hotel guest gets off, clearly having pressed the wrong button, and the rent-a-cop puts out a meaty hand. The guest looks up and immediately recognizes Mourinho. He calls out, “Give ’em hell, Jose!” (he pronounces it “Jo-zay”) and grins. Mourinho’s expression is like he just tasted questionable milk. He does not move. He is not looking at his phone. He is not reviewing papers. He is sitting by himself, staring at nothing.
The elevator opens again. Three Manchester United staffers emerge. It is time. Mourinho still doesn’t move. There is a beat or two or three (or four). The staffers shuffle awkwardly. Finally, Mourinho stands up. He does not apologize for the weirdness or for spacing out. He just looks at them and then leads the way down to the bus.
There is another game tonight. Another game, another show, another real-time referendum on the carnival that is one of the greatest (and most polarizing) managers in soccer’s history leading one of the world’s grandest (and most polarizing) clubs into near-daily chaos. His $385 million team is in sixth place, has already lost to Brighton and Tottenham, and before Thanksgiving, knows it has almost no chance to win the Premier League title. (They’d go on to lose to West Ham as well.) This is Mourinho’s life now. He takes a seat at the front of the bus on the right side. The seat next to him is empty.
A short time later at Old Trafford, the Theater of Dreams, the stadium where Manchester United celebrates its 20 league titles and 12 FA Cups, Mourinho watches his players score an early goal in a League Cup match against second-division Derby County. He watches his former player, Frank Lampard, now managing Derby, lead the underdog visitors back level and then, stunningly, in front by a goal. When Manchester United scores an unlikely tying goal in second-half stoppage time, Mourinho gives a single fist pump from the sideline.
During the ensuing shootout, Lampard stands arm-in-arm with his coaches and players; they endure the pressure together. Mourinho stands behind his team, unaccompanied, pacing and frequently looking away from the goal where the kicks are being taken.
Derby wins. The plucky underdogs slay the giant. The Manchester United fans boo (again). Mourinho does a terse TV interview (again). Mourinho makes an unflattering comment about one of his players (again) and a social media controversy ignites (again — more on that later).
When it’s all over and there are crumpled paper napkins whipping around an empty Sir Matt Busby Way, Mourinho and his coaches stay inside the stadium for hours. They sit in Mourinho’s office and pore over scouting reports and tactical sheets. They talk about the players and the next game. They plot.
It is after midnight when they leave, closer to 1 a.m. when Mourinho returns to the Lowry. The bar is quiet. The fans and the rent-a-cops are gone.
Mourinho, 55, has been the Manchester United manager for more than two years but the Lowry, a renowned if somewhat tired hotel, remains his home. Pep Guardiola, Manchester City’s Catalan coach and Mourinho’s longtime nemesis, has embraced living in northern England, opening a restaurant in Manchester and settling in a city center apartment. Mourinho has resisted. His wife and children live 200 miles away, in the London home they moved into during Mourinho’s Chelsea days. They rarely come to Manchester.
Rui Faria, Mourinho’s longtime assistant, used to live at the Lowry with Mourinho but he resigned in May. Faria wanted to be around his kids, wanted to finally make his own way. Mourinho and Faria had been together for 17 years; Mourinho has told confidantes often how much he misses Faria.
Mourinho strides through the hotel’s lobby. It is quiet. No family. No best friend. A team that can’t win enough. A group of players who don’t want to listen enough or, maybe, are just tired of what they’re hearing. The worker buffing the hotel’s floor gives Mourinho a small smile as he swishes by.
Mourinho approaches the elevator to go upstairs. To his room. To the turn-down service with the tiny macarons on a china plate. To the white, terry-cloth slippers wrapped in plastic. To the view of a dank river behind the curtains that usually stay drawn.
The light flashes. The bell dings. The doors close. Jose Mourinho is alone again, and the question follows him as the elevator climbs.
Is this what the end looks like?
Asked at his pre-match news conference about the omission, Klopp added: “Look, I think my job and your job as well is not to, with questions which you answer, provoke when you answer.
“We have to cool the situation down because [we] cannot clarify that situation tonight — and it’s not our job. We are in Serbia and we respect that with 100 percent. No, it’s not sad — that’s the world, that’s how it is. Politics has always [had] an influence on life, on the planet I live at least. But we are not here for that, we are here for playing football.
“That’s why we try to make sure that we can be focussed on football. I realised already tonight [that] — I expected it differently — mostly the English-speaking journalists were asking about it, to be honest. It could have been a story and we didn’t want to have a story besides a football story. That’s why we decided what we decided.
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