Mourinho meltdown and hints of civil war at Real Madrid

The Portuguese wants to know who plunged the knife into his back after a training ground conversation was leaked to the press

There were just hours to go until Real Madrid's match against Athletic Bilbao and Madrid were about to finish the first half of the season five points clear at the top of the table with 16 wins in 19 games. Favourites to win the title, they were about to score their 67th goal and Cristiano Ronaldo would soon be on 23, one ahead of Leo Messi. But it was not about that all that. Not now and not later. It would not even be about the 4-1 win – a brilliant game, open, exciting and end-to-end, between two sides that can be great to watch. The focus was elsewhere. Even José Mourinho's focus was elsewhere. The team meeting at Madrid's Mirasierra Suites Hotel wasn't so much about formation as about information.

Mourinho wanted to know one thing above all and he wanted the players to know that he would find out. Who had plunged the knife in his back? Who had leaked a conversation from the training ground? Who was the mole? Mourinho claimed to have banned newspapers from the team hotel – "there is internet, you know", one player said with a smile later – and insisted that he had not read Marca on Sunday morning, but of course he had. Few coaches are so aware of the media as Mourinho, a man with his own press officer, a man who is delivered a dossier of cuttings every morning; one for whom the message is part of the match. Mourinho had read it, so had everyone else and it did not make for happy reading.

Marca's cover showed Mourinho and Sergio Ramos face to face. Word for word, they reproduced a conversation between the two men, and Iker Casillas, at Real Madrid's Valdebebas training ground on Friday morning – two days after Madrid, playing ultra-defensively, had again been beaten by Barcelona; two days after Ramos had noted: "We follow the coach's tactics. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't." According to Marca, the conversation started with Mourinho turning towards Ramos and saying: "You [plural] killed me in the mixed zone." To which Ramos replied: "No, mister, you only read what it says in the papers not everything we said."

Mourinho replied: "Sure, because you Spaniards have been world champions and your friends in the media protect you … and because the goalkeeper …" At that point there is a shout from Casillas, training 30 metres away: "Eh, mister, round here you say things to our faces, eh!"

Another part of the conversation starts with Mourinho saying: "Where were you on the first goal [against Barcelona], Sergio?"

"Marking Piqué"

"Well, you should have been marking Puyol."

"Yes, but they were blocking us off [using basketball style screens] with Piqué and we decided to change the marking."

"What? So now you're playing at being coach?"

"No," replies Ramos, "but depending on the situation in the game, sometimes you have to change the marking. Because you've never been a player, you don't know that that sometimes happens."

Suddenly, the lid had been lifted. Just a little, but lifted. The conversation – which was impeccably polite, Ramos even using the formal form of "you" – revealed Mourinho's irritation at the Spaniards and his belief that they are protected by the press; by extension, it hinted at his suspicion that they are the ones responsible for the leaks to the media – this report came in the context of a year in which El País's Diego Torres has written a number of stories about events within the dressing room and in a week in which Marca had correctly reported that Angel Di María would miss the clásico, despite the coach's attempts to keep that quiet.

rest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jan/23/mourinho-real-madrid-sid-lowe

tato sprava obletela vcera vsetky futbalove servery...
dnes AS tvrdi, ze Mourinho odide v lete: http://www.as.com/futbol/articulo/mou-planea-dejar-madrid-junio/20120123dasdasftb_7/Tes
preklad AS clanku: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/la-liga/9032950/Jose-Mourinho-to-quit-as-Real-Madrid-manager-in-June.html