We’ve seen footballers karate kick spectators, bite opponents and even get shot dead for failing to save a penalty. Managers have punched each other, taken bungs, and made post-match speeches so unhinged that there were genuine fears for their sanity (yes, Kevin Keegan, I’m looking at you..)
More recently, almost every senior official at FIFA was busted for alleged corruption on a gigantic scale, which is not just mad but very, very bad.
But few things have ever been madder than Chelsea’s decision to sack Jose Mourinho – the single greatest football manager on Planet Earth, and arguably the greatest ever.
When the news broke at 2pm, I was lying on my sofa preparing for an appearance on tonight’s Question Time.
Within seconds, mainstream news bulletins and social media ditched all interest in the possible collapse of the European Union, the war on ISIS, and even Donald Trump.
THIS story was so big, so sensational, that like the man himself only top billing would suffice. Everyone had a view on the downfall of the charismatic Portuguese coach with the silver hair and even more silver tongue.
All of it was extreme. None of it was calm, measured or vaguely sensible. Grown men either wept, howled, laughed dementedly, or did congas round their offices.
Even women with zero interest in the game itself mourned the loss of their Jose, the guy with the twinkling eyes, the sharp suits and a rakish smile to melt a thousand King’s Road ice queens.
My reaction?
Well, as an ardent Arsenal fan I should have been thrilled at the failure of a man who dubbed our own manager Arsene Wenger a ‘specialist in failure’.
But I wasn’t.
Instead, I was flabbergasted. This is the single worst decision in the history of the sport. Jose Mourinho isn’t just a winner. He’s THE winner of the modern game. In just 12 years as a manager he’s won an astonishing 21 trophies.
It is worth reminding ourselves of his precise haul: Six trophies at Porto, a hitherto mediocre Portugal side that he transformed into European champions in 2004, and with whom he won two League titles, a UEFA cup and two Portugese cups.
Then he went to Chelsea and won 5 trophies in three years, including two League titles, one FA Cup, and two League cups.
Inexplicably sacked after falling out with Russian oligarch owner Roman Abramovich, Mourinho was hired by Italian club Inter Milan and won them five trophies in three years, including two League titles, two domestic cups and his second European Champions League.
Keen for a new challenge in a new country, he moved to Real Madrid in Spain and won three trophies in two years including one League title and two cups.
Finally, he returned to Chelsea and won them another Premier League title, along with a third League cup.
Today, his reward for this unprecedented CV was to be unceremoniously sacked because he had a rough four months.
And whilst many will chuckle at the exit of football’s most brash, arrogant personality, the self-acclaimed ‘Special One’, I find it utterly preposterous.
Yes, Chelsea have had a bad season.
Yes, they’ve lost nine of their 16 League matches.
Yes, they’re languishing in 16th place, hovering in the relegation zone.
Yes, they’ve been a walking basket case on and off the pitch, ever since Mourinho screamed abuse at a female physio during a game.
But this is still a manager who won Chelsea the Premier League title just SIX MONTHS AGO, for God’s sake!
What kind of insanity determines that a man with such a prolific record of success, who is in charge of the REIGNING CHAMPIONS, is thrown into the gutter after the first difficult patch he’s ever endured as manager?
To put this nonsensical decision into perspective, consider the status of the aforementioned Arsene Wenger, who hasn’t won the Premier League for 11 years and has never won the Champions League, but is widely lauded as an unsackable genius.
I don’t know what’s gone wrong at Chelsea, but I do know this: Jose Mourinho didn’t suddenly go from the best manager in the world to the worst.
If you want to blame anyone for their disintegration, then why not start with the players? A more arrogant, haughty, over-paid bunch of spoiled prima donnas it would be hard to find in the annals of the game.
Each week, after more and more defeats, we’d read leaks from this group of under-performing reptiles informing us that it was all Mourinho’s fault.
He’d ‘lost the dressing room’ apparently.
Really?
Or could it be that many of these so-called superstars had lost their heart, their hunger, their bottle and their commitment? Remember that these guys each get paid up to £200,000 a WEEK to kick a football. The very least their fans might expect for that is that they give every game 100%. But no, we even heard that certain players were feigning injuries because they refused to play under Mourinho.
Imagine the sheer , breathtaking audacity of that attitude?
No wonder he finally snapped and publicly berated the treacherous ‘rats’ in his midst. Football managers who don’t win enough games for long periods of time deserve the sack. But managers like Mourinho, whose win ratio is so stupendous that it dwarfs almost any of their rivals, have earned the right to more time and to more loyalty from their players.
Tonight, Chelsea announced his replacement until the end of the season is Dutchman Guus Hiddink – the manager who presided over Holland’s recent disastrous Euro 2016 campaign.
If he’s a better bet to revive the club than Mourinho, then I’m Darth Vader. Football has been descending into the abyss of greed, corruption, selfishness and impatience for years now. But it wasn’t until today that I genuinely shook my head in wonderment at how stupid it has become.
Shame on you Chelsea for what you’ve done to Jose Mourinho today.
And shame on all football fans who see his demise as something to celebrate.
He will be a massive loss to our League and we will all, whether we admit or not, miss him enormously as a personality.
As for Chelsea’s players, doubtless many of whom are popping open their Cristal tonight, I have one thought for them: isn’t it time managers were given the right to sack THEM when they persistently fail to play to the standards expected of them?
That might take the smug little smirks off their pampered little Ferrari-driving faces.
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