Jose Mourinho sacking: as in politics, successful leadership is all about results
When a newspaper is in difficulties it’s quite usual for the editor to be sacked while the chief executive and other senior managers keep their jobs. It’s the same in football. The manager departs; the chief executive and his cronies remain. In one way this is quite reasonable. The editor is responsible for what goes into the paper, the football manager for what happens on the field. So they are judged by results, a fate chief executives often seem to avoid. Consequently, nobody was surprised when Manchester United told Jose Mourinho ‘Time’s up. Pack your bags’ this week. It evidently wasn’t an overnight decision. The former United player, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seemed to already have been lined up to take charge as ‘interim manager’ for the rest of the season. It should be said that Mourinho has displayed a bit more dignity in his departure than Ed Woodward, United’s Chief Executive, in his sacking.
Nobody, as I say, was surprised. United, a club that used to be distinguished by loyalty, as was demonstrated by the patience of the then Board with Alex Ferguson for several seasons before he started winning trophies, now appear to have no clear strategy and therefore no patience. It doesn’t help that Woodward complacently remarked some time ago that poor results on the field made no difference to United’s financial position. Doubtless, however, he realizes that this would change if success on the field is long delayed.
Anyway Mourinho has gone, and, given his hangdog demeanour in many of the innumerable TV interviews which, like all other celebrity managers, he is required to endure, he himself may be neither surprised nor distressed. One has the impression that the job hasn’t been much fun for him for months now.
Fans are often, even usually, quick to demand the dismissal of a manager whose team is neither winning nor playing exciting and entertaining football, and this has been the case with United. They’ll usually tolerate dull football if matches are won. But, to the outsider, the interesting questions are: what does a manager actually do; and what makes for a good one?
Managers, of big clubs especially, may do little actual coaching. The two most important sides of the job are probably selection and man-management. Every fan of course feels capable of judging players’ ability and getting team selection right. Actually selection is easy only if your team is doing well and winning matches; it becomes very difficult if this isn’t the case. Mourinho this season has seemed utterly inconsistent in selection; it’s been as if he was shuffling a pack of cards and dealing a hand in the hope it will be a good one. So players bought at great expense – like Alexis Sanchez and Fred – have scarcely featured and flopped when they have appeared.
As for man-management, it’s not only that Mourinho has been repeatedly at odds with his most expensive player, Paul Pogba, but there have been reports of widespread disgruntlement. Nothing surprising about that. Struggling teams are rarely happy ones. Nor of course is a struggling manager easy to live with. A disconnection between players and managers is all but unavoidable. Each side in the relationship loses faith in the other, and eventually dialogue moves from the difficult to the impossible.
Ultimately managers – like editors again – are judged on results. Whatever skills they have are not necessarily transferable. When Sir Alex Ferguson retired, the job was given to David Moyes. He was said to be Ferguson’s own choice. Moyes had done respectably at Everton, a smaller club incapable of challenging United, Chelsea or Arsenal, but nevertheless in the upper half of the Premiership. He was soon believed to be out of his depth at Old Trafford, and lasted less than a season. He has subsequently met with no great success elsewhere. Does this mean that his record with Everton was misleading, and that he lacks the abilities a manager requires? Probably not. There are countless examples of managers who have succeeded at one club or more than one indeed, and then apparently failed at others.
A manager doesn’t need to have been an outstanding player himself. Indeed, none of the current crop of celebrity managers were great in their professional careers. Ferguson himself was a good footballer, but no more than good, certainly not great, just like most successful managers in England and Scotland over the years. I think Kenny Dalglish is the only great player in decades to have managed a club that won England’s top division. As for the present group of European celebrity managers, very few made a mark as players. Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
But then it’s the same with editors or indeed Prime Ministers. There is no reliable way of predicting success. On the contrary there are plenty of examples of men – or now women – who won themselves an often well-deserved reputation only to fail, even flop, in another job. Anthony Eden was a successful Foreign Secretary. Gordon Brown dominated the Treasury as few other Chancellors have. Both failed when they moved to 10 Downing Street. Conversely few around her, or in the media, believed that Margaret Thatcher had the qualities required to be a successful Prime Minister. She proved them wrong.
On the other hand, like Tony Blair later, she stayed too long, ran out of credibility, lost the winner’s touch. Her man-management skills withered, even deserted her, and many of her backbenchers no longer saw her as a winner. So they got rid of her just as abruptly as Manchester United have dismissed Mourinho. Labour would have handed out the same treatment to Blair if he hadn’t yielded to the demands of his immediate colleagues. Alan Jones, the coach of the Wallabies who won a Grand Slam on their tour of the northern hemisphere in 1984, was aware of the vagaries of reputation and fortune, and put it nicely: “One day you’re a rooster – the next a feather duster.” It’s feather duster time for Jose Mourinho now, and the reflection that today’s roosters – on the other side of Manchester, at Anfield and Stamford Bridge – whose success has done for him, will most likely be feather dusters themselves someday, may provoke a wry smile.