Teachers' Day Special - Jose Mourinho: teacher, mentor, guide

Ricardo Carvalho and Jose Mourinho

He’s been called cocky, arrogant, disrespectful in the past.

But that is only on the surface. Scratch beneath it and you find out that Jose Mourinho is widely revered and highly respected by those who have played under him throughout his very successful career.

Should you follow the path of his career that began in Portugal and is currently revisiting England with stops in Italy and Spain, you would find a clutch of players who reserve only the highest platitudes for the Portuguese tactician, having praised him for bringing out the best in them, forming with him a bond that transcends the standard player-manager relationship, which stems from his understanding that happy people are happy footballers.

A game of join the dots linking those players to clubs where Mourinho was present would show that it is an attitude prevalent in every club where he has taken on the mantle of being a manager.

Ricardo Carvalho is one of his best-known disciples. A member of the UEFA Champions League Team of the Tournament in 2004 for his contributions to Mourinho’s Champions League winning Porto team that year. The former Portugal centre-back then joined his countryman when the ‘Special One’ moved to Stamford Bridge and excelled in a Chelsea team that won the Premier League at the first time of asking.

“For me, what makes him special is that he likes to work on the small details,” said the 35-year-old, who now plays with AS Monaco in France. “He wants you to improve as a player and overall he wants to win. We won a lot of trophies together. Where he improved me as a player was that I needed to be more focused throughout a game.

“Sometimes I lost concentration,” he added. “He got me to focus for the whole game. Even against the smaller teams, he wants you to be focused because he wants to win every game.”

Carvalho formed a successful partnership with John Terry at the heart of Chelsea’s defence, spending six years and winning ten titles. But it was clear that Mourinho thought highly of the centre-back when he needed his services at Real Madrid. Carvalho, then 32, jumped at the chance of rejoining his former mentor and it is quite obvious that the now 35-year-old knows his mentor extremely well.

“When he loses, he can’t live with that. He can’t live with a defeat and you feel that in him,” said Carvalho to Sky Sports. “After a match when you have had a bad game, the next day is a difficult day to work with him. He doesn’t say much but when he speaks, he has to criticise and say what he thinks about your performance. He makes you feel like you have to improve.

“Sometimes he criticises you in front of the other players, at other times he says it to you alone,” adds Carvalho, who has played 75 times for Portugal. “But he is only saying what he thinks, what he sees and what is true for him. He doesn’t say it to blame you, he says it to help you.”

“I never took it personally. You can tell him what you think, too, and he will respect that.”

Despite Carvalho not being a part of Mourinho’s plans during his final season in the Spanish capital, he stayed on at the Santiago Bernabeu instead of moving on loan to a host of other clubs that enquired about his services not just because Mourinho the manager made him the player he was, but because Mourinho made him the person he was.

Although Mourinho only spent a couple of years at Inter Milan, it was clear he had left his mark on those who played for the Nerazzurri. Wesley Sneijder was the heartbeat of the Portuguese tactician’s very successful Inter side and fondly remember’s Mourinho’s years in Italy because he knew when players needed a break from a gruelling, exhausting season.

“Mourinho walks around, talks to the lads, joins in on card games or fooling around,” said the Netherlands international in a lengthy interview he gave after the 2010 FIFA World Cup. “He can look at you and say ‘Wes, you look tired man. Take a couple of days and have some time off with the Missus.’ You know when you come back, he will expect something from you.”

But it wasn’t all fun and games under the Portuguese’s wing, says Sneijder. He knew when to enforce discipline.