I screw my face up in anger as You’ll Never Walk Alone is brayed around an otherwise silent and rapidly emptying Stamford Bridge. I really hate that song.
The game ends and I stand there dumbly for a moment, as if
I’ve missed something, a joke I’ve not got. Zouma, a player who can never be
accused of not trying, is on his haunches, head in hands: a dictionary
definition of defeat. Beyond him is the Chelsea bench. I can’t see Jose, but if
the Liverpool fans are to be believed, he’s not just down the tunnel, he’s out
of the stadium and he's taken his £30 million payout.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next. I seem to zone out
a little bit. Butterflies dance not just in my stomach but in my chest as well,
rising all the way to my throat. I felt my airways tighten and my chin wobble.
Oh my word no. I turn away and dash up the steps out of the gate, trying my
best to keep my head down and not think about those times when I was a little
kid and my mum would tell me “it’s only a game, nothing to cry over”. That
always made it worse, anyway. By the time the old man catches up with me, I’m
by the turnstiles. He asks me if I’m alright, but he saw everything.
For clarity, I did not cry on Saturday when Chelsea lost. But I could definitely feel myself close to it. Maybe the last time I felt like this was
in 2006 when Chelsea had lost at Old Trafford, again to Liverpool, in a FA Cup
Semi Final. Choking back tears, finding my shoes suddenly fascinating as
screeching scousers cavorted and taunted us all the way back to the tram. That time,
I would have been 14. They’d played Ring
of Fire at the final whistle, the Merseysiders all bouncing along to it. A
decade later, and I still don’t like Johnny Cash.
So why did I feel like crying at a football match, in
public, as a 24 year old man? This wasn’t just another increasingly regular
defeat: it felt fatal. I thought Jose was gone. Gone forever. And forever means
forever. No one comes back for a second time. I thought back to when he first
came to the club and the excitement of it all. Already a European Cup winning
manager despite being a few years younger than my dad, the ego to match that
fact.
I was young and impressionable at the time. For that 04/05
season, my dad and I had season tickets in the family section, Shed End Lower.
We’d drive up to games and on the way back, turn the radio up so we could
listen to his Jose’s post-match interviews on Five Live or Talk Sport, ears
pricked up to catch every word. Ask people to name another manager with
charisma of that level, before or since, and most can only muster up Clough.
English football had not seen anything like that for quite
some time, and Chelsea certainly hadn’t. In the preceding years, even under
Roman Abramovich, it seemed footballing society was happy for Chelsea to win
the odd cup, or climb as high as second, just as long as they get back in their
box so that one of the ‘big’ clubs can win the league you cocky upstarts.
Ranieri was almost too nice, too likeable. Zola, as beloved as he is, could
leave Carragher on his backside or score a goal in a cup final, but he’d react
with nothing more than a shy, almost embarrassed smile. Jose ripped up the rule
book and brought a Machiavellian commitment to winning that matched
Abramovich’s ambitions. He demanded to know why we couldn’t have our seat at
Europe’s top table, too.
The ‘Us v. Them’ mentality, as much as he is derided for it
now, I think is partially why we took him into our hearts at Chelsea the first
time round. When UEFA and the established football elite seemed to be doing
everything in their power to stop nouveau rich Chelsea spoiling their party,
Jose was there, fighting our corner, and more often than not, giving them all
bloody noses. Arguably it still is this way, Chelsea against the world, it’s
just that the Rest of the World team seem to be winning right now.
The morning after Liverpool, I check my phone to see the
same words repeated over and over again. “I’d rather lose than win for
Mourinho”. Twitter and Whatsapp groups speculate on the culprit and the words’
repercussions. I decide to turn over and go back to bed.
Mourinho’s biggest skill is supposedly his man management.
We all remember reports that Chelsea players were in tears upon his exit from
the club in 2007. What about in 2010 when, having just won the European cup to
complete the first ever Italian treble, TV cameras captured himself and
Materazzi saying goodbye? Both brutally sincere, both crying, overcome with
emotion. It’s a cliché, but a lot of Mourinho’s players down the years would
have died for him. Some of his fans might have, too. What’s changed?
Whether or not the quote is real or not is unimportant. Has
the dressing room been lost? It’s most probably split. But then, the club as a
whole seems to be split. Are the people tweeting under the hashtag #MourinhoOut
still a monolith of Nigerians, Arsenal fans and trolls? Or are we adding to
their shrill voices a few dissenters who are all too keen to assure us that they’re
Proper Chels. People who claim to have seen us lose 6-0 to Rotherham and are
therefore obviously entitled to their
opinion?
I don’t make the decision though. We already knew that this
is not 2004, and this is not the Mourinho of old. He can’t just steamroller
naive 4-4-2 teams with a three man midfield anymore. John Terry is no longer
the English Maldini. Perhaps most pointedly, this will be the third season of
Jose’s second Chelsea tenure. He’s never managed a club for longer than that. Some
will say that that’s what he does- takes on a team, burns out his favourites, wins
trophies and leaves. We’ve all heard accusations that the squad has too little
rotation, the players are too tired, there’s no trust in the youth. This is
uncharted territory for him. I thought that this was the understanding when he
came back, that he was going to build a dynasty? Someone needs to give Jose
Mourinho a chance to do something different, to let him grow as a manager. How
will we all feel if we let him go and he ends up doing this at Man U? After the
fall out of Wednesday night against Dynamo, it’s evident that a lot of the fans
know this. Hopefully the board takes notice.
Earlier on the day of the Liverpool game, I’d bought a poppy
from two lads in Army uniforms. I’d emptied my pockets of change and tossed it
in the bucket, then brought my eyes up to meet theirs. I was taller than both,
and their faces were young. To the point where I was taken aback; weird to see
supposed authority figures most probably younger than me. I don’t know when
you’ll read this and I don’t know the circumstances in which you will. I’m not
the one to make the decision, nor do I have all the information available to
me. If Jose goes though, the final part of my childhood might go with him.
@JJReid13
@JJReid13
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