If the praise of one’s peers is the highest accolade, José Mourinho may be particularly pleased with what Gianluca Vialli said about him after Inter Milan’s 1-0 victory over Claudio Ranieri’s Juventus, which helped the nerazzurrito extend their lead at the top of Serie A.
“José reminds me of Nietzsche’s Superman,” Vialli, a studio pundit on Saturday, said. “The Superman has to learn to embrace adversity in order to overcome it and become even stronger. Well, Mourinho adores adversity.”
Before we get carried away, there is no real consensus as to what Friedrich Nietzsche really meant when he spoke of the Übermensch in his classic Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But if we take Vialli’s definition at face value, it does neatly sum up Mourinho’s present experience in Serie A.
This season he has taken on allcomers, seemingly seeking confrontation rather than avoiding it. It’s almost an ethos of “that which does not kill me only makes me stronger”. And, crucially, he has evolved with it. Saturday night in many ways epitomised this.
Don’t let the scoreline fool you. It was a high-tempo, high-intensity match with plenty of entertainment, one in which Zlatan Ibrahimovic was, at once, brilliant at creating chances and dreadful at taking them. A game in which Mourinho won the tactical battle against Ranieri, who, despite various mitigating factors (a number of absentees, losing Tiago to injury after a few minutes), probably would have been second best regardless.
It’s a credit to Mourinho that, for a man who travels through life surrounded by his own personal mythology, he was able to shatter many of those same myths. Take his tactical approach. The assumption was that he would replicate the 4-3-3 formation he so successfully used in his first two seasons at Chelsea. That is why he spent £25 million to secure two genuine wingers, Mancini from Roma and Ricardo Quaresma from Porto. But when that set-up failed to satisfy him, he switched to 4-2-4, putting a second striker alongside Ibrahimovic and keeping his wingers. That lasted until a few weeks ago, when he introduced 4-3-1-2.
That ability to change formations is not something we saw during Mourinho’s time in England, except, of course, when he was handed Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko and told to find a way to make it work.
But that was imposed from above. Mourinho’s shifts this season have been of his own making. “At Chelsea I had a very mobile front three and if I have players like that, 4-3-3 is my preferred choice,” he said. “Here I have front players who are maybe stronger and more technical, so I have to play differently. It’s not a problem for me. If the players are clever, you can play any formation as long as it suits their characteristics.”
Equally impressive has been his man-management. The tactical keys to the Juventus match were Adriano, the big Brazilian who joined Ibrahimovic up front, and Dejan Stankovic, in the hole behind them.
Between them, the pair had made nine Serie A starts this season.
Adriano was (and is) seen as a disciplinary problem. He was late for training, spent too much time in night-clubs and returned to Milan from national duty in Brazil only 48 hours before the Juventus match, telling the media waiting at the airport that he needed to have words with Mourinho. Stankovic, loyal to Mourinho’s predecessor, Roberto Mancini, said he felt out of place under the new regime and the media speculated that he would be on his way in January.
Yet Mourinho put his faith in both, even at the price of excluding a man such as Patrick Vieira – “Mourinho had better explain to me why I didn’t start,” he grumbled after the game – and they repaid him handsomely.
“I need Adriano to play like that, like an animal,” Mourinho said, before heaping equal praise on Stankovic. “Tonight, he was a midfielder and he was a striker, it was like playing with 12 men.”
Mourinho proved that he can change his tactical approach and face adversity head on. Those qualities alone may not make him an Übermensch, but they show that there is definitely something Nietzschean about him.
"We played better than the opposition. The team did fantastic from the first minute to the last, those on the pitch and those on the bench," the jubilant Portuguese coach told reporters.
"I understood during the week how important it is for Inter to beat Juventus. To beat a team like Juventus you have to play very well. We scored a goal that wasn't beautiful but it is three points to us."
Their already fierce rivalry worsened in 2006 when Juve were stripped of the title and demoted in a match-fixing scandal, leaving Inter to be awarded the championship and then sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Patrick Vieira from their rivals.
Mourinho and Juventus counterpart Claudio Ranieri are also far from being best friends after a number of crossed words and the fact that Ranieri was sacked by Chelsea in 2004 to make way for the Portuguese.
"Juve played a negative game," Mourinho said before explaining why he had brought back striker Adriano from a four-match absence after discipline problems.
"For a game like this we needed an 'animal' like Adriano."
Ranieri, whose third-placed side could have gone joint-top with Inter with a win, was gracious in defeat.
"Inter deserved it because they pressed and stopped us playing our game." he said.
"I think Ibrahimovic wasn't trying to pass but was trying to shoot. It could have been tiredness on our part. Tonight we maybe played too many long balls."
Yuhuuuuu Mourinho mene!!!!
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Besides the personal battle - Mourinho succeeded Ranieri at Chelsea and the pair have been trading verbal jabs since the beginning of this season - the match also has important implications for the standings.
Inter leads the league with 27 points, followed by AC Milan with 26 and Juventus with 24.
"The title is on the line," Juventus president Giovanni Cobolli Gigli said, preferring to avoid talk of revenge after the Italian match-fixing scandal reshaped the Serie A pecking order, with Inter replacing Juventus as the team to beat.
"Juventus won't be seeking any sporting vendettas at the San Siro. We're simply going to try to win. You've got to look forward and leave the past behind your shoulders," Cobolli Gigli added.
Still, Mourinho and Ranieri seemingly can't stop talking about each other and how their paths have crossed in recent years.
"He's won and I haven't. But I've been in football for a long time and I've always moved up, which means I've done a good job even without winning," Ranieri said in Thursday's Gazzetta dello Sport, referring to the fact that he has never guided a club to a league or international title.
Mourinho directed FC Porto to the Champions League title in 2004 and won consecutive Premier League titles with Chelsea in 2005 and '06.
Mourinho took note of Ranieri's record when he said before the season that the Italian arrived at the big-time "without having won anything," to which Ranieri replied sarcastically about how "elegant" his colleague is.
Ranieri also criticized Mourinho earlier this season for having his assistant coach conduct post-match interviews.
"He's a Portuguese coach, which isn't too different from an Italian coach. I'm an Italian who has been around the world and opened up to other types of football," said Ranieri, who has also coached Valencia and Atletico Madrid in Spain.
Ranieri said he and Mourinho differ "on everything," although he appreciates the respect players show for his colleague, "which shows they have a great relationship with him."
The top players on both sides - Zlatan Ibrahimovic for Inter and Alessandro Del Piero for Juventus - were both spared from playing in midweek international friendlies, and should be fresh for Saturday.
Ibrahimovic scored both goals in Inter's 2-0 win over Palermo last weekend and Del Piero accounted for three of the four goals Juventus scored in beating Real Madrid home and away in the Champions League.
Juventus has won five straight games in Serie A and seven overall. Inter has struggled against lesser opponents recently but performed well against Palermo.
"Ibrahimovic has to play like he did against Palermo," Inter president Massimo Moratti said.
With Ivan Cordoba suspended, Marco Materazzi or Nicolas Burdisso will likely pair with Walter Samuel in central defence for Inter.
Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon is still out, and Cristiano Zanetti has also still not returned. Another Juve midfielder, Christian Poulsen, re-aggravated a muscle problem in training this week.
