{"id":939363,"date":"2026-10-24T14:52:56","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T14:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939363\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:52:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T14:52:56","slug":"older-calmer-but-still-playing-the-hits-mourinho-and-madrid-primed-for-clasico-la-liga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939363\/","title":{"rendered":"Older, calmer, but still playing the hits: Mourinho and Madrid primed for cl\u00e1sico | La Liga"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jos\u00e9 Mourinho has done the por que?, the printout<\/a> and the press conference no-show, and he\u2019s been here only three months. The Real Madrid manager has played the classics without even playing a cl\u00e1sico. Not yet anyway, but it\u2019s time: on Sunday night he returns to the stadium he first arrived at 30 transformative years ago as Bobby Robson\u2019s talented young translator, and last visited in 2013<\/a> as the most famous manager in football.<\/p>\n

The coach who once declared \u201ctoday, tomorrow and always, Barcelona in my heart,\u201d and claimed he would only ever go to Real Madrid<\/a> to destroy them, has been entrusted with attempting to bring about the destruction of Barcelona. It is not the first time: if his return is about nostalgia, which it is, that\u2019s wrapped up in their rivals too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cl\u00e1sico is just another game in the championship but to say it\u2019s a game like any other would be to lie, totally unreal,\u201d Mourinho said on Wednesday, and he knows. As for Barcelona\u2019s latest star, he\u2019s looking forward to seeing Mourinho again. \u201cI love the needle,\u201d Lamine Yamal says. \u201cThe Mourinho-Guardiola era, I loved all that. That\u2019s football. Sport is serious but I want a show and we have more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are bigger things, sure; life beyond Barcelona. Madrid\u2019s astonishing Champions League record since Mourinho was last here \u2013 following up the elusive decima, the 10th title which had evaded them for 12 years, with the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th in 10 years \u2013 played out without Barcelona. There has not been a European cl\u00e1sico since the 2011 Champions League semi-final when the man Pep Guardiola had just called the puto amo, the fucking master, produced his por que speech, asking why Barcelona were favoured<\/a> by the continent\u2019s referees and accusing Uefa of fixing it for them.<\/p>\n

Yet right now it doesn\u2019t feel as if anything is bigger, this week\u2019s Champions League matches framed around what they meant for the game that really matters, even with Barcelona going to Paris<\/a>. The rivalry is always there; in Mourinho\u2019s case it is at the heart of it. The day he got the Madrid job in 2010 was the day he won the Champions League with Inter but its genesis lay in the semi-final, when he had sprinted across the Camp Nou pitch<\/a>, finger raised, celebrating. Madrid were relieved and grateful, spared the sight of Barcelona lifting the European Cup in their stadium and shown how to stop a team that appeared unbeatable. Mourinho, leaving the Santiago Bernab\u00e9u in Florentino P\u00e9rez\u2019s car while his joyful players returned to Milan, was asked to repeat that with Madrid.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez, who had presided over the gal\u00e1cticos\u2019<\/a> failure<\/a> and walked away, had returned<\/a> in 2009 but won nothing. Instead, Barcelona dominated. They had the core of Spain\u2019s World Cup 2010 winners: six starters in the final. Madrid needed a culture shift, to go to war, a manager to rule over the dressing room. \u201cThis year\u2019s gal\u00e1ctico is Jos\u00e9 Mourinho,\u201d the president said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Mourinho (left) with Bobby Robson and Ronaldo after Barcelona defeated Paris Saint-Germain in the Cup Winners\u2019 Cup final in 1997. Photograph: Colorsport\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

By the time Mourinho left<\/a>, it had turned nasty, his enemies internal too. They had been, Mourinho later said, \u201cthree intense, almost violent years\u201d. Yet P\u00e9rez had always felt drawn towards the only manager he has truly liked. Including when Mourinho was belligerent; especially when he was belligerent. Mourinho had, P\u00e9rez said, returned Madrid to their rightful place. After every subsequent success the president called to tell him he started this. And if Mourinho\u2019s first cl\u00e1sico brought a 5-0 defeat<\/a>, Barcelona going on to win the league and Champions League; if his final season had ended trophyless; and if Guardiola had won twice as many trophies, it was also true that of the four competitions Guardiola failed to win at Barcelona, three were taken from him by Mourinho.<\/p>\n

Time has passed, things have changed, but the parallels are clear. Madrid have gone two years without a trophy. In the first of those, Barcelona won the league with two weeks to spare, completing a domestic treble. They had defeated Madrid four times, scoring 16 goals. Last season they wrapped it up with three weeks to spare via a <\/a>cl\u00e1sico <\/a>victory<\/a> as incontestable as their superiority throughout a season when Madrid\u2019s splits<\/a> played out in public. Then Spain won the World Cup with eight Barcelona players in the squad. Madrid\u2019s only representative, Marc Cucurella, joined the club after the tournament started.<\/p>\n

If this was a crisis, it was time for Mourinho. A man whose flaws had been forgotten over time, nostalgia eclipsing all else. A man with the authority \u2013 a man afforded the authority \u2013 to impose on the dressing room. One with the personality to fight, go to war again. With just about everyone, and Barcelona especially. When you listened to P\u00e9rez\u2019s extraordinary rant<\/a> in May, the quiet part said out loud, all campaigning and conspiracy, politics and paranoia, it made sense.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the still unresolved Negreira case<\/a>, in which Barcelona paid the vice-president of the referees\u2019 committee, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Enr\u00edquez Negreira, more than \u20ac7m between 2001 and 2018, there is substance to Madrid\u2019s complaints. Barcelona have denied corruption, saying Negreira worked as an adviser, but that case has become the centrepiece of Madrid\u2019s discourse, unlike when the two clubs were still holding out in the Super League. It doesn\u2019t help when the league president likens your TV channel to Joseph Goebbels\u2019 propaganda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whether those complaints have validity now is a different question; whether the discourse of conspiracy does is another step again, even when decisions go against you. Every mistake \u2013 and decisions that are not even mistakes \u2013 is framed as a machiavellian plan, the insinuations constant \u2013 when they are not said outright.<\/p>\n

When Mourinho arrived he said he was older, calmer, but here he is. In defeat, perhaps he was always likely to be. After losing to Betis, he asked por que? (Why? Because that\u2019s the rule, the decision correct.) After losing to Atl\u00e9tico, he turned up with a printout. And then he didn\u2019t turn up to the press conference after he had run on to the pitch to embrace Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior after the Brazilian scored against Villarreal only for the goal to be ruled out and Vin\u00edcius sent off for pulling Nathan Saliba\u2019s hair. That led to a four-game suspension, the forward ruled out of the cl\u00e1sico.<\/p>\n

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The reason for the no-show was that Mourinho didn\u2019t want to risk saying something that would earn him a suspension for the cl\u00e1sico, the game. And he is happier now, if only for a little while, something shifting. When last Saturday Barcelona made it 11 wins from 11, averaging more than four goals a game, most agreed they would win the cl\u00e1sico and the title would be done: they were flying, led by Lamine Yamal<\/a>, while Madrid, beaten twice, hadn\u2019t taken off. Mourinho\u2019s team had not been very good, familiar problems still there. In short, there was not much football.<\/p>\n

The previous Wednesday Madrid had delivered another of their seemingly inexplicable comebacks, from 3-1 down at Roma, to win 4-3 in the final seven minutes, but was there really anything to build on? It turned out there was something of an explanation. In those minutes Arda G\u00fcler played, Yan Diomande played, Fede Valverde played at right-back, and Vin\u00edcius didn\u2019t play.<\/p>\n

It seemed so obvious to everyone, including the manager. So he did it again, and Madrid scored four against Sevilla \u2013 three of them glorious \u2013 last Sunday and four more against Leipzig on Wednesday, Diomande belting in a wonderful volley once Vin\u00edcius had gone off. The night before, Barcelona conceded four at the Parc des Princes.<\/p>\n

Hansi Flick admitted he prioritised the cl\u00e1sico over PSG, leaving out Rodri and withdrawing Pedri and Raphinha early to keep them fresh for a game that could be decisive and tends to shape a season. But he has injury concerns at the back and warned his players that 15 goals conceded is too many. Mourinho couldn\u2019t resist complaining that Madrid have a day less rest for the cl\u00e1sico \u2013 something perhaps mitigated, much like any analysis, by playing at home against Leipzig rather than away at Paris Saint-Germain \u2013 which got the excuse in early, more evidence of how \u201cthey\u201d have it in for his side.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to cut the gap and we can only do that by winning,\u201d said the Real Madrid goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, of the six-point deficit. \u201cWe\u2019re going with confidence.\u201d Yet things do feel a little better now, defeat for Madrid not inevitable, a title still there to played for and something like a team taking shape. \u201cI had to get to know them,\u201d Mourinho said on Wednesday night. \u201cI\u2019ve only been here 105 days; it\u2019s not long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Mourinho has done the por que?, the printout and the press conference no-show, and he\u2019s been here…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-939363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}