José Mourinho’s rigid thinking brings zombified display from Tottenham
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With three minutes still to play at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the score 1-0 to Chelsea – as it had been for what felt like at least a fortnight – something odd happened to Carlos Vinícius. He had a chance to score a goal. Serge Aurier delivered a fine cross from the right. Vinícius leapt well, wrenched his neck and made contact.
Spurs had woken up late in this game. Flustered, eyes still gummed shut, this drained and listing group of players had finally made it to the table. A point would have been a sensational return, even against a Chelsea team that had also faded.
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Instead the header from Vinícius drifted past the post. And there was at least a kind of justice in this. Spurs didn’t really deserve it. José Mourinho, who from the start set his tyro centre-forward the task of playing just like prime Harry Kane, certainly didn’t deserve it.
Oh, José. For the first half of this weirdly gripping Premier League game it seemed Chelsea’s players were being set an unexpected philosophical conundrum. Never mind trying to win a match against active opponents. How do you kill that which was never really alive in the first place? How do you put away a team that comes pre-put away?
For 45 minutes Tottenham Hotspur were a zombified thing, barely an active participant. Throughout this Mourinho paced his touchline, hood draped limply over his shoulders. He looked concerned, bothered but not really cross or angry – and rightly so. Anger is best reserved for something that can be corrected. These Spurs players didn’t just look short of confidence, they looked like an army sent into battle with a baguette in one hand and a map etched in invisible ink in the other.
It was all the more galling that Tottenham improved significantly after half-time simply by playing higher up the pitch, doing football-type things. By that point 45 minutes of everyone’s life had already been and gone. Football isn’t about waiting for the other person to die of boredom, a wise man once said. This looked, in those opening moments, like a team bored with itself.
Mourinho picked his best available 11 here, with no departure from that meat-and-potatoes 4-2-3-1. So yes: the same formation as every other week, but with your main man replaced by one of the least proven members of your squad. Is this a good idea?
Why play a system that involves funnelling the ball through the centre forward every time, Harry Kane-style, when the centre forward is no longer Harry Kane? Why ask Vinícius to do everything, when he’s just learning how to do the main thing?
This was hyper-rigid stuff from Mourinho,who might have tried some other shape to fit his personnel, but instead simply sent out Spurs as a slightly worse Spurs, with half of the two-man attacking plan absent. Early on Vinícius was sent striding forward on the break with Son Heung-min haring off to one side, Steven Bergwijn the other. He almost fell over his feet trying to work out what to do.
Understandably so. This is not a criticism of Vinícius, It is a criticism of Mourinho, of ossified thinking, of setting a near-impossible task then looking baffled when it turns out to be, you know, quite difficult.
But this is where we are now with this deflating entity. From the start Tottenham dropped instantly into that neurotically deep defensive block. They managed something amazing early on, succeeding in being outnumbered both in the centre and down the flanks at the same time.
Ben Davies was repeatedly overrun by Callum Hudson-Odoi and Reece James. And Chelsea were awarded a penalty. Nothing about this was surprising. It came down Chelsea’s right. It came because Spurs were playing so deep every exchange was taking place in or around their own area.
Timo Werner made a fine run out to that side, and then simply allowed Eric Dier to thrash around on the grass in front of him. For what felt like an eternity Dier waggled his legs in the air, like an upturned beetle awaking from uneasy dreams to find itself transformed into a Tottenham centre-back.
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Eventually the opportunity to fall over arrived. Werner took it. Jorginho tucked the kick away. And by half-time Spurs had played an entirely inert 45 minutes. For Chelsea this must have felt like walkingwalkingdancing with a corpse around the dance floor.
What could Mourinho do to alter this? The full-backs started higher up the pitch. The players ran forward a little harder (as in: they actually ran forward). A little later than scheduled, something that looked like a game of football broke out. Spurs had chances, although theybut might also have gone further behind. In the end they got what they deserved: no goals, no attacking plan, and only that late trapped energy to prove there was life here at all.