After two and a half seasons of juggling the tightrope at Manchester United, José Mourinho has left. It was probably about time.
José Mourinho is a good-looking man. Sharp facial features, salt and pepper hair, and a minimalist grayscale wardrobe perfectly come together for the moniker of Portuguese George Clooney. When he strode into Carrington Training Complex sometime at the end of May 2016, dressed in a sleek black suit over a white shirt and black tie, he looked every part of a modern-day Manchester United manager, and the immaculately fitted Armani was, in truth, merely a highly visible ornament on everything that made José so…attractive.
Mourinho had travelled and succeeded across the continent, and he was now here to take England’s most prestigious club back to its glorious heights, from a state of hope to opulence. Two years of mediocrity, in the world of 7-second, self-destructing video clips, seemed too long, and it was time for United to move out of old-fashioned concepts like continuity and marrying efficiency with aesthetics. Pragmatism and immediate success were what José guaranteed; pragmatism and immediate success were what Manchester United wanted and needed.
José spoke little in his first press conference, just smiling through it with a gleam in his eyes, looking completely in awe of a giant club. The echoes, however, couldn’t have been louder. Mourinho is one of those very few figures in football whose every step makes a loud rumble, his eyes more used to camera flashes than the moon. When he came to Manchester United, it seemed like everything had fallen into place just to make this happen. The club had managed to arrest a dangerous slide; the only man who seemed capable of carrying such heavyweights upwards was now in position, ready to fly. After a long time, Manchester United found themselves as underdogs in the fight for England’s elite, and Mourinho’s CV with underdogs had been colossal.