Centre of attention Mourinho ready for return to the big time

An 11-month absence from football management ended with Saturday’s win over West Ham. On Tuesday night, Jose Mourinho will be reunited with Champions League football too.

The visit of Olympiacos will be his first in front of the home fans since becoming Tottenham Hotspur’s manager last Wednesday and is a chance build on the rapport struck with the away support who cheered on the 3-2 win at the London Stadium. Victory will confirm qualification into the knock-out stages for last season’s beaten finalists.

Mourinho has always been keen to position himself as a manager synonymous with the European Cup. That came easy enough when he was lifting it with Porto (2004) and Inter (2010), and when Real Madrid hired him to end their wait for their 10th. Though he was not able to bring it back to the Bernabeu, he did at least break their duck of six straight round of 16 defeats by taking them to three successive semi-finals between 2011 and 2013.

Ever since, however, he has felt the need to remind others of his credibility in Europe’s elite competition as he approaches a decade since his last success in it.

At his unveiling he reminded those assembled he had not lost a Champions League final. On Monday, when running the rule of Spurs’ rollercoaster ride to the final, he noted their good fortune before surmising: “To arrive in the final is an incredible achievement but it is not history. History is winning."

The Champions League also formed a key part of Mourinho’s opening address as Manchester United manager. He joined in the summer of 2016 with the club preparing for a season of Europa League after a fifth-placed finish in 2015/16 and stated his personal dismay at not being a part of it. Winning the Europa League to gain entry into it the following season was as much for his ambitions as the club's.

Yet, as it was during both stints at Chelsea, success in the competition itself was still beyond him. Wissam Ben Yedder’s brace helped Sevilla triumph in the round of 16 at Old Trafford in 2018 as Mourinho began wondering whether this version of United had his champion mentality. And it was away to Valencia last December, in his last Champions League fixture, that confirmed they did not. “Nothing that happened surprised me at all,” he snarled in an I-told-you-so manner after a limp 2-1 defeat.

United had already qualified for the knock-out stages in part because of an unlikely 2-1 win away to Juventus earlier in Group H. But with Young Boys inflicting a second defeat on the Italians that night, a win would have seen them top the group. Prior to their match, Mourinho urged the team to ignore the possibilities of an unlikely result in Switzerland and just focus on their jobs. Those ended up being futile words.

It did not matter much in the end. United famously overcame Paris-Saint Germain in the round of 16 before being dealt with more infamously by Barcelona. They might have had a better chance against Ajax in the quarter-final but there were no guarantees they would have beaten Atletico Madrid had they finished top. Mourinho was long gone by then anyway.

Reports in the lead-up to Valencia suggested the end was in sight. Five wins and just two defeats in his last 10 matches did not suggest a total disintegration, but Mourinho’s constant gripes with his playing staff and frustrations at not being able to bring in recruitments he wanted had been building up and, ultimately, peaked here.

With Liverpool to come at the weekend, David de Gea was left at home while Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Ashley Young and Ander Herrera were rested on the bench. Any hope of conserving their energies for Anfield was lost when the first three were brought on to make United more competitive against a laidback Valencia side who had already secured third.

Carlos Soler opened the scoring after 17 minutes, pouncing on a Phil Jones clearance that did not make it out of the box before the defender's own goal doubled the lead at the start the second-half. Changes to personnel and shape had the desired effect with a slick move resulting in Rashford making it 2-1, albeit in the 87th minute. Still, there was time for Juan Mata to almost snatch a point in the 90th minute, though one which would not have moved United into first.

For Mourinho, it was the perfect defeat. The complaints he had made about the lack of quality and of players not stepping up when given a chance were vindicated. This was, after all, a bit of a free hit.

Fans and sections of the media had wondered why players like Andreas Pereira, Fred and Marcus Rojo had spent so much time on the bench. Here, in a game of little consequence, they failed and had to be bailed out by the only ones he could trust.

“I expect (more) from my players - especially players that week in week out you ask me why they don’t play, why they don’t start," he said in his press conference afterwards. "It was a good match to play. A match without any kind of pressure. A match of a competition that everybody likes to play and in the end my team improved really when I made the changes that I didn’t want to make.”

That Sunday a 3-1 loss to Liverpool was his last in charge. He was sacked two days later and has maintained his criticisms of that squad ever since.

It is why, despite the trepidation to look too deeply into Mourinho's press conference performance last Wednesday, there seems genuine sincerity in his words that Spurs have the third-best squad in the league. It is why, on the eve of his return to Champions League football, he upgraded their chances of winning the European Cup from “miracle” to “very difficult”.

“There are some teams with a different culture of victory. There are clubs and teams with a different potential, experience and know-how. I think all of that at this level plays a role. But with these boys, I will never be afraid of any Champions League match that comes into our faces.”

Mourinho will want to view the final group match away to Bayern Munich on December 11 as a chance to see if this squad really do have what it takes to go one better than last year's run to the final. But firstly all the focus will be on Olympiacos.

Should three points be forthcoming the club will secure their third appearance in the knockout stages. For Mourinho, it will be his 15th. Tuesday night feels as much about his long-running affair with the Champions League as it is about Spurs just getting to know it.