Early Wednesday afternoon at Cobham and José Mourinho, having taken refuge from the chill of an incessant autumn drizzle, was impatient to crack on. The international window had rather dragged, a manager left with only a handful of first-team players to drill forced to break up the tedium by paying a fleeting visit to Belgrade to see Branislav Ivanovic and Serbia defeat Japan, and then an evening at Wembley watching England qualify for the World Cup.
In between there was an enjoyable weekend spent with his family, but the days still felt "empty" without league fixtures to demand his attention. "I got bored," he said. "I'm not the kind of person to tell my assistants to stay here and train the four or five guys we have in while I go on holiday. I don't do that. I can't do that. I was here at the training ground all the time, and that frustrated me because I like to work with the players and I could not. So I prepared, for Cardiff this weekend, for Schalke next week. I went to watch Ivanovic last Friday, England on Tuesday. I watched every match my players were in on television. But you always want to get back to it, for it all to start up again."
The two-times European Cup winner's enthusiasm and intensity are retained, with the latest early-season hiatus unwelcome. Mourinho, at 50 and back where he feels he belongs, is already consumed by the new kind of project he has accepted at Chelsea. Where his task first time around had been to establish this club's reputation as winners, breaking a league title drought that had extended for half a century, now the Portuguese is rising to another challenge. This team has claimed London's first European Cup and a Europa League under interim managers over successive seasons, fine achievements given they have either felt like a squad in constant transition or a side too often reliant upon pragmatism to secure success against classier opposition. Mourinho must bring style and panache to the party.
He is aiming to ally work-rate with pizzazz, establishing an industrious flamboyance, and his players are buying into what is required, even if the likes of Juan Mata and Kevin De Bruyne have already been subjected to some tough love en route. That is all part of the process, with results on the pitch solid rather than spectacular to date. It would have been folly to expect anything else. The restored manager points regularly to a lack of key personnel at the peak of their powers, in an age bracket from 26 to 30. Instead he has inherited, or seen purchased, prospects with burgeoning reputations who are eager to prove their pedigree while an older generation work to maintain their own standards and help guide the youngsters through the clutter of an English calendar.
Figures such as Frank Lampard and John Terry were mainstays of Mourinho's initial Chelsea lineups in that glittering first spell at Stamford Bridge and, where they might otherwise have faded into the background, are restored to prominence now. The midfielder has featured in all matches bar a League Cup tie at Swindon this season. Terry has started each of the club's Barclays Premier League fixtures and should maintain that record against Cardiff City on Saturday. The older heads remain pivotal to the project.
Take Terry. The centre-half has endured much since Mourinho departed back in 2007, the list of controversies, plenty of them self-inflicted – from twice losing the England captaincy to being banned over the Anton Ferdinand affair, to the nagging injuries and missing the Champions League final through suspension – trip off the tongue too easily. At times he felt like a bit-part player under Rafael Benítez's stewardship last season, and even the veteran club captain is not immune to self-doubt.
Now, though, he is revived. "He's recovering his self-esteem," said Mourinho. "In the last few years he was not playing a lot, he had problems on the pitch, he had problems outside the pitch, he had suspensions for different reasons, he had injuries, he had managers who didn't trust him enough. And it looked like, at a certain moment, his career was going in the wrong direction.
"Even I was questioning, from far away, what was happening to this guy: physical problems, psychological problems, what is going on? I'm happy he's proving he's still a top player. He plays in a position where age doesn't make a huge difference. It's a position where players rely more on positioning, on reading the game, and being in the right place at the right time. Experience helps. Look at how many top teams have experienced players at centre-half: go to Barcelona and Carles Puyol is there; go to Manchester United and there's Rio Ferdinand; Jamie Carragher at Liverpool was playing until last season and was important for them. You go to many clubs and top clubs and central defenders are 30 to 34. John is proving his quality. With what he did at Chelsea in the last decade, I think he deserves to be back on track."
Then there is Lampard, the club's record goalscorer whose box-to-box style, all late charges into the penalty area to catch opponents unawares, is being tweaked as time overtakes him. The onus these days is to transform a player capped 102 times by his country into an English Andrea Pirlo, a deep-lying distributor and an asset in possession. Personalised drills are aimed at coaxing different qualities from his game. "Of course Frank can become that," said the manager. "He has to adapt and learn every day how to play with this 'new body'. A player can still learn new skills at his age, for sure. I'm 50 and have been a manager since 2000, and I'm learning every day, every match, with every experience. You can always learn new skills, especially if the player has an open mind like he does.
"He's a player who can keep the side's balance, a player who thinks about the game and can work with kids around him. For him, it was very good that I'm back because the trust is so big. He knows that every decision I make on him is for my team – because that's the most important thing – but also for him. So if, one day, I bring him off at 70 minutes, or if I leave him on the bench or give him a rest and don't select him, it's for his own good. He knows, without me speaking to him every day – which I don't do with my players – that I'm doing it for him, and that I might need him round the corner to play often. The trust and friendship is so big that he is happy, he's calm, he's cool. At this moment of his career, it was very important for him to have somebody like me around. For him, it's very good."
That pair, along with Ashley Cole, are out of contract next summer and yet, even now, the glowing praise for their early-season endeavours suggests the experienced English heartbeat in the midst of Mourinho's latest Chelsea lineup might be retained beyond this term.
"I like that local core, not just in England but when I've worked in Portugal, Spain and Italy," said Mourinho. "You owe some respect to the country and the national team, so to give some options for them is important. To keep the culture of the country in your own team's style is also very important, and you cannot lose characteristics of the local football. Sometimes people think: 'Ah, we want to play like this or like that team, like a Barça or a Bayern.' But, first of all, you have to play like the culture of the country you're in.
"I like that loyalty. I also like the fact the foreign players arrive and find a spine in place, a nucleus of local players who can tell them and explain to them where they are, how things work here, the way they have to behave, and even the way they have to play in this league. They have to understand what they've joined. For example, an English player knows what it's like to play eight matches in three weeks at Christmas time. For a foreigner, that can come as a shock, so you need locals around who can explain what it means to people, why you can't complain and why you have to buy into it. Ideally it's not just about having British players either, but having players who are made in Chelsea. In three or four years' time, if we don't have other Englishmen to replace this nucleus of players – when Lamps is 39, John is 36 – I will be very sad. Every club needs that.
"So we are working on that [new generation]. We have some players on loan, like [Nathaniel] Chalobah, and we have some others working and growing in the under-21s. Their standard is improving. Before, these age groups in England did not have a good level of competition at that age, but now there is a national championship, an under-19s Champions League, and it's improving them. The conditions in our academy cannot be better – the facilities and coaches are amazing – but while the quality of the coaching and the philosophy can be excellent, you really need competition to develop the kids."
Such observations will presumably be noted in Mourinho's testimony to the Football Association's commission when Greg Dyke's nominees come calling. The Portuguese is ever eager to impart his opinion and, having worked successfully across Europe, his experience should be tapped.
Mourinho enjoys his role as an educator these days. The manager was speaking after a Barclays community event at the training ground where grassroots coaches had been given the chance to question him on his coaching philosophy as part of the sponsors' initiative to thank community heroes this season. Those coaches who had taken their seats temporarily in the media suite lapped up his anecdotes, whether he was addressing modern-day tactical trends or the highlights of his time spent as Sir Bobby Robson's interpreter in Portugal and Spain.
"Hopefully, one day when I have finished my managerial career, I will have time just to do that, to tell those stories and help the next generation," said Mourinho. "I've always been happy talking to coaches, and my office door is open. I like doing it, especially with kids who want to be something, or with people who might have other jobs but who are really just in love with the game. I understand their curiosity. They want to know details and to try and learn from your experience." Some of those in his audience at Cobham were clad in Chelsea kit. Others piped up expressing alternative allegiances, even if they still hung on his every word.
The Premier League has welcomed Mourinho back. His return has helped offset the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, providing Chelsea supporters with a hero to cleanse the discord from last term, and opposition fans with a pantomime villain to heckle. "I don't think the Premier League, or the country, missed me," he said. "The country is too strong in relation to football, and the Premier League is too strong to miss somebody. It's not a question of 'missing'. But it's certainly a question of me loving it here and people know that.
"I enjoy playing at home, feeling the Chelsea fans' passion, that they are happy to have me on their side; but I also enjoy playing away and feeling the opponents support their own team, giving me that 'hostility'. It's a 'pure hostility'. It's not aggressive. If Chelsea fans at Norwich are singing: 'José Mourinho', and the other guys sing: 'Fuck off Mourinho', I don't think it's aggressive hostility. It's better than them ignoring me. If, one day, I was Norwich manager, they'd be singing my name too. It's pure. You go, for example, to countries like Spain and when they say: 'Hijo de puta Portugues [Portuguese son of a bitch]', you know it's a deep feeling. A real hatred. They mean it. Here, even the hostility is different. More tongue in cheek. When I'm not winning I'm 'not special any more'. I understand that and I like it.
"It is good to be back. I feel as if I belong here. Take Tuesday, for example, at Wembley. I did not celebrate [England's qualification] by jumping up or drinking because that's not in my nature, but inside I was celebrating. I was happy. A World Cup without England is not a World Cup. They're one of the big football countries and, even if at any particular moment the national team is not at a high level, England has to be always in a World Cup. Of course, part of me was also happy that my players won't have the pressure of the play-offs in November and can play two friendly matches instead, rather than worrying if they would go to Brazil. They deserve to be there. The tournament will be better for having them there."
Yet, with that next international window a month away, Mourinho will plunge himself back into club matters with relish. His players returned from their national set-ups to discover the manager had armed himself with new statistical resources while they had been away. Fine-tuning is being taken to extremes. There really is no hiding from the analysis any more. "This week we finished work with my staff comparing the way we defend when some players are in the team, and the way we defend when some are not playing. It was all trying to bring more of a scientific approach to everything. I wanted to see if my eyes were seeing exactly what the numbers suggest they should be." And are they? "Yes. Oh yes." That was said with a smile and then, with a shake of the hand and work to be done, he was gone.
José Mourinho was speaking at a Barclays community event. This season Barclays is thanking fans, community heroes, players and managers for making the game what it is. Join the conversation on social media using #YouAreFootball
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