In an extract from the explosive new book “The Lighter Side of Jose Mourinho” Patrick Barclay provides a poignant counterpoint to the false polemic and jealous slander leveled against the Chelsea manager from his time at Real Madrid
“Even at the nadir of his turbulent (but, as history will ultimately fondly record, successful), spell at Real Madrid, as moles were multiplying like rabbits and a thick fog clung to the banks of the Manzanares, reeking with the stench of treason, Mourinho understood the need to reach out to his players, as a father to his brood, to protect, to nurture and to nourish.
While at times, the stern, Victorian patriarch was seen justifiably wielding a rod of iron, more frequently (but, alas, seldom reported), Jose saw his role to provide jollity and merriment and to shield his players from the horrors of the outside world as his “little donkeys” or “burritos” (as he would call them) struggled against the behemothic resources at Barcelona and Zaragoza; at Osasuna and Getafe.
Traitors, however, know not joy in their souls, nor levity in their hearts and his affections were frequently spurned and misrepresented.
One member of the dressing room said “He would come into work dressed only in a cardboard cutout of a Dalek and walk around training shouting ‘Ve must exterrrrrrrrminat ze spies!’ People just thought it was odd.” During one team lunch, when players were becoming paranoid about who was leaking information to the press, Mourinho created a teachable moment when he satirized their paranoia, although the lesson was learned by few. “He kept looking suspiciously at the omelet that Ronaldo was eating. After a minute or two he jumped to feet, seized the omelet and accused it of being a Catalan spy and a trade unionist. He then dressed as a high court judge and held a mock trial of the omelet in front of his dumbfounded players. The trial lasted deep into the night until he delivered his verdict upon which the omelet was hanged from a miniature gallows he had fashioned. There were bits of egg everywhere – it was disgusting.”
However, the most sensational moment of Mourinho’s Madrid tenure came when he tried to mentor Granero through persona tragedy. “Granero had spilled a cup of tea on his pet ptarmigan while it was preening on a bag of cement. The poor bird became stuck. They were able to save its life but not its legs and it was fitted with little prostheses.” Mourinho had a great love of wildlife and of gamefowl in particular and he created a cunning ruse to distract Granero and his colleagues from this unfortunate incident. “He dropped his keks in the dressing room, pulled out one of those aerosol duster things they use to clean computers and rammed the nozzle of it right up his own arse. As he squeezed the trigger, his penis swelled momentarily as the air passed through his meatus, before making a loose farting noise as his member returned to its previous flaccidity. It was quite a funny trick, I suppose but a bit minging. The effect created a sort of mist like someone blowing a raspberry after drinking a glass of milk. Granero just cried.”
