"Mourinho, Pátria e Família"

"Since his arrival in Britain 18 months ago Jose Mourinho's style, arrogance and Iberian good looks have charmed and irritated in equal measure. As his Chelsea team prepare to meet Barcelona this week, Peter Conrad argues that Mourinho's militancy and shameless self-belief are rooted in his country's fervent attachments to family, religion and politics."


Outras passagens interessantes deste "polémico" e analítico artigo escrito por Peter Conrad no Observer Review:

"The British, ironically accustomed to defeat, long ago gave up being arrogant, though we envy the strutting and preening of cockier races. But how does Mourinho look from the other side? I often travel to Portugal, where I spend my holidays; knowing the country, I began to speculate about Mourinho's pedigree, and to wonder where his nationality explains his bumptious behaviour. The experiment began playfully enough, but my conclusions - which suggest that his motives and methods owe everything to political sympathies that he has always refused to discuss - are a little worrying."

"The Portuguese journalist Miguel Sousa Tavares has admiringly described Mourinho as one of the 'condottieri', a latter-day version of those warlords who brutally ruled Italian city-states during the Renaissance."

"Mourinho is as abstemious as the puritanical Salazar. He neither drinks nor smokes, and has made only one foray into a British pub"