Does Manchester United's Signing Of Nemanja Matic Suggest Jose Mourinho Has Become A Parody Of Himself?

Does Manchester United's Signing Of Nemanja Matic Suggest Jose Mourinho Has Become A Parody Of Himself?
12:04, 01 Aug 2017

It is only natural that someone with the cool-headed pragmatism of Jose Mourinho should excel in the transfer market, and indeed Manchester United’s summer fits neatly with the Portuguese’ history of quick and assertive action after one year in a job. Mourinho has won the domestic title in the second year at every club he has managed since Porto, reflecting his ruthlessly effective problem-solving skills; after 12 months of assessing a squad, Mourinho sifts, sorts, and replaces with perfection.

Just like the capture of Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa, and Nemanja Matic in the space of six months while in charge of Chelsea in 2014, Mourinho has honed in on the perceived gaps in United’s squad and filled them, one by one, with a quiet dignity. But should we be worried that one of these players was a re-signing? Does making exactly the same purchase three years later merely reflect Matic’s unique brilliance, or does it serve as an apt metaphor for Mourinho’s inability to move forward and progress with the times?

There is something oddly lopsided about Jose’s pursuit of key targets this summer and a growing sense that he has missed something crucial in the assessment of United’s 2016/17 season. Two years of Louis van Gaal’s achingly dull football - characterised by the paralysis of individuality as the players were denied the positional fluidity they craved - has seized up limbs inside Old Trafford. Mourinho’s team failed to ingest their new manager’s ferocity largely because creative freedom had been suffocated for so long.

The obvious solution to this problem was to sign a scurrying forward capable of linking the lines, raising the tempo, and ending the arthritis that has engulfed Old Trafford. And so when United began their ultimately doomed pursuit of Antoine Griezmann it seemed as though Mourinho had, once again, accurately identified the chinks in his team’s armour and begun patching them up.

But once Griezmann committed himself to Atletico Madrid, Mourinho bizarrely switched strategy – and began stockpiling the sort of powerful-but-clunky footballers already over-represented at United. As Victor Lindelof, Romelu Lukaku, and now Matic join the club, Man United are beginning to look like a parody of a Mourinho squad; all brute force and clinical touches but without the delicacy and creativity to truly thrive at the top of the Premier League.

Matic is a superb footballer and the sort of crunching midfield stopper that has always formed the beating heart of a Mourinho team, but his arrival surely pushes Ander Herrera – a beautifully weaving footballer who is emerging as one of the most talented creative minds in the Premier League – to the fringes. An awful lot now rests on Paul Pogba and Lukaku to steamroller their way through opponents.

Mourinho’s dramatic collapse during the 2015/16 campaign has permanently altered our impression of a man who once appeared invincible to English eyes; the mask has slipped and there are murmurs he has lost his magic touch.

And so like Arsene Wenger, who has become a parody of his own obsession with aesthetics over results and only buys clichés of his own philosophy (small, nimble-footed, but mentally weak players), Mourinho may be gradually sinking inwards, unable to evolve with the times. Signing Matic might solidify his central midfield, but it might also complete Man United’s transition into an uber-Jose team: a satire of Mourinhoism that is too tall, too strong, and too single-minded to succeed.

It is worth noting that a football manager’s decline into irrelevance usually manifests as spiralling into a caricature of themselves; 2017/18 won’t just define Mourinho’s United career, it will confirm whether or not he has reached the end of his time at the top.

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