Watford vs Manchester United: Jose Mourinho's bitter feud with Walter Mazzarri poised to reignite

When someone generates enemies as willingly as Jose Mourinho, he is going to keep bumping into them after a while. When almost anything can be turned into a slight or a feud, he would have to retire from management to avoid men he had fallen out with.

Last Saturday, Mourinho faced up to Pep Guardiola, the man with whom his obsessive competition dominated Spanish football from 2010 to 2012. On Sunday he will face a lower key of rival, but still a coach with whom he has exchanged genuine unpleasantries over the years: Walter Mazzarri. Between 2008 and 2010, the two men wound each other up in a way that only two similar people can, even if Mourinho tried to put as much distance between them as possible. “A donkey can work hard,” he once sneered, “but he will never be a thoroughbred”.

Mourinho arrived at Internazionale in 2008, desperate to take the team back to the top of European football and to prove his brilliance as a manger, after the sting of being beaten by Guardiola to the Barcelona job.

Mazzarri, back then, was in charge of Sampdoria and took exception to the prickly ambitious Mourinho failing to credit them after a 3-0 win in the Coppa Italia. The next season Mazzarri left Sampdoria to go to Napoli, where he built a brilliant team, based on the threat of Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi up front.

When Napoli drew with Inter in the league, Mazzarri snapped at the lack of respect he perceived in their celebrated coach. “Mourinho talks, talks, talks and talks rubbish, so much rubbish,” he said. “The first time he did this to me was a year ago, when my Sampdoria won 3-0 without any argument. He said his team deserved to win. People have understood it now, they can see he’s taking them for a ride.”

Mourinho is not one to turn the other cheek and hit back hard at Mazzarri, accusing him, interestingly enough, of playing “predictable football”. “Considering how much Inter struggled, imagine if we had been unpredictable,” Mazzarri said. “The truth is they had a great deal of difficulty against us both in terms of physicality and quality. I don’t like to stir up controversy, but if I am attacked in this way then I won’t be taken for a fool.”

Whether Mazzarri does or does not like to stir up controversy, Mourinho is more open about it. And he is willing to go further than most. He played one of his favourite cards, pointing to how little Mazzarri had won, a trick that backfired when he later said it of Claudio Ranieri. “He has never even won the Coppa Lombardia or the Coppa Toscana,” Mourinho said. “Beating me is the most important thing in his career. A donkey can work hard, but will never become a thoroughbred.”

When Mourinho underlined his own brilliance with the 2010 treble, still the peak of his career, he left Italy for Real Madrid and Mazzarri was not sad to see him go. But when Mazzarri left Naples to take the very poisoned chalice at Inter, who have still never really replaced Mourinho, there was finally a rapprochement. Mourinho was relieved to see his old team in the hands of a man who was as spiky as him.

“I think I am quite similar to Mou,” said a more reflective Mazzarri. “Every coach is an artist, each has his own way of viewing football, but in terms of man-management I see myself to Mourinho’s style. And I think he agrees with me.”