Jose Mourinho has guided Chelsea to third place in the Premier League this season. Jordan Mansfield / Getty Images
Jose Mourinho has guided Chelsea to third place in the Premier League this season. Jordan Mansfield / Getty Images

Mourinho, ‘the man who scorned many a nearly man’ now one himself



Jose Mourinho’s extraordinary managerial career includes some historic achievements. He became the first manager to win the Premier League, Primera Liga and Serie A. He is the only one since 1995 to lift the European Cup with a club outside England, Germany, Italy and Spain. He went unbeaten at home in 150 league matches spread over nine years.

And yet the most unlikely feat may beckon. A man who forged an identity as a serial winner is on the brink of accomplishing something altogether different. Mourinho should become the first Chelsea manager in the Roman Abramovich era to end a season without a trophy and retain his position.

The last time they were starved of silverware, in 2011, Carlo Ancelotti was dismissed in a corridor of Goodison Park. That the same Carlo Ancelotti, of course, could end this season as a champion of both Spain and Europe hints at Chelsea’s problems: with the exception of Pep Guardiola, Abramovich’s ideal coach, the well of Champions League-winning managers has almost run dry. They have appointed virtually all of those who have not retired.

For a while, it seemed as though Mourinho was destined to conquer the continent in Chelsea blue. Defeat to the underdogs from Atletico Madrid in last week’s semi-final felt like a missed opportunity but Chelsea are not among Europe’s best four teams. Taking them that far was a success in itself.

The same cannot be said of Chelsea’s Premier League record. Mourinho’s predictions that they would not win the league have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps he will take a perverse pleasure in being proved right. Yet Chelsea could – arguably should – have emerged on top.

They had a seven-point lead less than two months ago. They took 16 points from a possible 18 against the rest of the top four, illustrating that, in Mourinho, they have the best big-game manager in England.

But the “little horse”, to use the Portuguese’s phrase, tripped up on the little fences. Chelsea failed to score at home against West Ham United and Norwich City. They lost to Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sunderland. They have only won two of their last eight games against teams in the wrong half of the league.

They have lacked the efficiency and the ruthlessness of the great Mourinho teams. When Chelsea hit the front in the title race, past experience suggested it was ominous. Instead they, rather than supposedly more fragile Liverpool and Manchester City teams, failed the test of temperament.

Mourinho has formulated and framed the argument that Chelsea lack strikers.

With Samuel Eto’o and Fernando Torres in the autumn of golden careers, they have no one comparable with Luis Suarez or Sergio Aguero. Yet that is not reason enough: partly because Chelsea do not need to score as often as Mourinho, charismatic miser that he is, has constructed England’s best defence.

Rather the lack of goals points to both managerial miscalculations and stylistic issues. Mourinho felt he would sign Wayne Rooney last summer and, rather than having a better contingency plan, ended up with Eto’o, a man of uncertain age.

Partly because he is so persuasive, he has tended to escape criticism, just as he has done for loaning out Romelu Lukaku and selling Juan Mata. Because Mourinho is Mourinho, many Chelsea fans automatically assume he is right, just as they deemed Rafa Benitez wrong last season unless he proved otherwise. The Spaniard would have been demonised for making the same decisions.

Lukaku has a trait of independent thought that may not endear him to Mourinho but, predictably, he has outscored the strikers Chelsea kept. He has mustered 14 league goals himself. Eto’o, Torres and Demba Ba have only 19 between them.

Mata’s Manchester United career has been underwhelming, but he was Chelsea’s double Player of the Year, an artist who was sufficiently productive that his final full season in London yielded 20 goals and 25 assists. The Spaniard’s precision and invention may have helped unlock the packed defences who have frustrated Chelsea of late.

Selling Mata signified Oscar’s coronation as Mourinho’s preferred No 10 but the Brazilian has had a wretched second half of the season. Mata’s £37 million (Dh229m) fee is significant in age of Financial Fair Play but it is a moot point if Mohamed Salah, who arrived as he exited, is merely a second-rate Andre Schurrle or a player who offers something different in his own right.

With Eden Hazard incurring Mourinho’s displeasure last week, the flair player he seems to trust most is Willian, whose work ethic brings plaudits, but who has scored four goals in 42 games. The Brazilian has become the personification of prioritisation of the physical at the expense of the technical.

If Chelsea are to prosper next season, they require more subtlety as well as greater potency. As it is, and though they are trophy-less – Mourinho disparaged the Europa League Benitez won 12 months ago – they are in a better place they were a year ago. Mourinho has revived John Terry’s career, converted Cesar Azpilicueta into the best defensive left-back in England and recruited Nemanja Matic to become a formidable barrier in front of the back four.

Yet over the past decade, Mourinho has dealt not in individual improvements but in collective achievements. Progress has been measured in silverware and Chelsea will end this season without any. Mourinho, the man who scorned many a nearly man, has been this season’s nearly man.

sports@thenational.ae

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Anxiety and work stress major factors

Anxiety, work stress and social isolation are all factors in the recogised rise in mental health problems.

A study UAE Ministry of Health researchers published in the summer also cited struggles with weight and illnesses as major contributors.

Its authors analysed a dozen separate UAE studies between 2007 and 2017. Prevalence was often higher in university students, women and in people on low incomes.

One showed 28 per cent of female students at a Dubai university reported symptoms linked to depression. Another in Al Ain found 22.2 per cent of students had depressive symptoms - five times the global average.

It said the country has made strides to address mental health problems but said: “Our review highlights the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression, which may long have been overlooked."

Prof Samir Al Adawi, of the department of behavioural medicine at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who was not involved in the study but is a recognised expert in the Gulf, said how mental health is discussed varies significantly between cultures and nationalities.

“The problem we have in the Gulf is the cross-cultural differences and how people articulate emotional distress," said Prof Al Adawi. 

“Someone will say that I have physical complaints rather than emotional complaints. This is the major problem with any discussion around depression."

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  • Over a period of seven years, a team of scientists analysed dietary data from 50,000 North American adults.
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  • People who ate breakfast experienced a relative decrease in their BMI compared with “breakfast-skippers”. 
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Deep in a provincial region of northwestern Turkey, it looks like a mirage - hundreds of luxury houses built in neat rows, their pointed towers somewhere between French chateau and Disney castle.

Meant to provide luxurious accommodations for foreign buyers, the houses are however standing empty in what is anything but a fairytale for their investors.

The ambitious development has been hit by regional turmoil as well as the slump in the Turkish construction industry - a key sector - as the country's economy heads towards what could be a hard landing in an intensifying downturn.

After a long period of solid growth, Turkey's economy contracted 1.1 per cent in the third quarter, and many economists expect it will enter into recession this year.

The country has been hit by high inflation and a currency crisis in August. The lira lost 28 per cent of its value against the dollar in 2018 and markets are still unconvinced by the readiness of the government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to tackle underlying economic issues.

The villas close to the town centre of Mudurnu in the Bolu region are intended to resemble European architecture and are part of the Sarot Group's Burj Al Babas project.

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It is one of hundreds of Turkish companies that have done so as they seek cover from creditors and to restructure their debts.

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