Jose Mourinho
But even his defensive ideology isn't the crux of Mourinho's belief system. The only thing Mourinho believes in is winning. That sounds obvious, but it's really not. For him, defense is the best way to ensure results. If you don't concede a goal, you're always one score away from victory. It's the distinction Johan Cruyff picked up on when he bashed Mourinho in an interview ahead of this Champions League second leg:
[Mourinho] lost the dressing room at Real Madrid and it's possible the same thing is going to happen at Chelsea. The problem is simply that Mourinho always focuses squarely on the result. Everything else is secondary, even all the top players he has running around for him.
That's the fundamental tension in Mourinho's career: Is he so exalted because he really knows how to win, or does he win because he's gone to places with the best players? And can his style last when, come credit-divvying time, he will usually praise his own genius instead of those world-class players?
Since you can't easily point to one aspect of Mourinho teams that make them inimitably his—besides their propensity to win, which borders on tautology—he is uniquely susceptible to these criticisms. Even when Guardiola's teams lost, that they always went down tiki-taka-or-bust, an almost noble sacrifice to the manager's chosen religion. When the same United team that coasted to the title last season under Ferguson struggles so mightily the year he retires, we imagine all kinds of magic tricks the Scottish wizard must have been using to hide the limits of his squad. When Mourinho loses, you start to wonder whether there actually is anything deeper to the man than results.
But right before that criticism really starts to hit home with Mourinho, he turns around and starts winning again. After a successful-to-everyone-but-the-insatiable-Roman-Abramovich run with Chelsea the first go-round, doubts crept up as to whether his shock Champions League win with Porto really was a fluke. In response, Mourinho moved to Inter and reeled off Serie A's first treble, winning the league, the Italian Cup, and the Champions League. At Madrid, when it looked like Mourinho would never overcome the Best, Most Beautifulest Soccer Team Of All Time, he won La Liga with the highest-ever point total.
When Chelsea started this season shakily, and Mourinho made it clear to everyone that he didn't rate their two-time player of the year Juan Mata, the whispers about his management began anew. Then Chelsea took advantage of a couple Man City and Arsenal slip-ups to sit atop the league for much of the latter half of the season, bolstering his credentials almost as soon as they were questioned.
http://deadspin.com/typical-jose-che...ght-1561256468