The madness and melancholy of another Jose Mourinho disappointment in Europe

He stood on the touchline, with his hands firmly embedded into his pockets. Grey overcoat, grey trousers, grey loafers and, these days, a shade of hair to compliment the look.

Perhaps you remember how the younger Mourinho turned Porto into the kings of Europe and reminisced years later, with all the modesty for which he is famed, that he had fond memories of the Portuguese club with its “beautiful blue chairs, the UEFA Champions League trophy, God and, after God, me.”

Maybe you recall the time he recommended George Clooney to play him in a movie and how, in his first spell with Chelsea, he seduced the media and public to such an extent that the sports writer Patrick Barclay wrote that the Special One “even had a nice scowl.”

These days, however, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to wonder whether Mourinho will get the happy ending that he, almost certainly, believes his career warrants.

That is not said with any malice or disparagement, especially after the manner in which his Fenerbahce side, with a 3-1 first-leg deficit, fought back to take their Europa League last-16 tie against Rangers to extra time and, ultimately, the heartache of a penalty-shootout defeat in Glasgow.

The team from Turkey had Ibrox worried, seriously worried, before Jack Butland made himself a hero, keeping out Fenerbahce’s first penalty-taker, Dusan Tadic, and then the fourth, Fred, the former Manchester United player. Mert Hakan Yandas became the third Fenerbahce player to miss, putting his shot over the crossbar, and that was the moment this old stadium vibrated with joy – and palpable relief.

“We won,” were Mourinho’s first words of a post-match news conference, before repeating it for added effect. “We won two-zero. We lost the tie because, in the first match, we were not good. But in the second match, we played a fantastic match.

“Only one team played. Only one team scored. Only one team deserved to score more. Only one team deserved to win after 90 minutes. Only one team deserved to win after 120 minutes. And only one team had three penalties (turned down).

“If you don’t get three, you get two. If you don’t get two, you get one. If you don’t get one out of three, everything is strange. But it was also strange how we were knocked out of the Champions League (against French club Lille in August) with a VAR penalty in the 120th minute.”

It was a classic Mourinho response – staring back from his seat, stewing over a mix of new and old grievances on a night that served as a reminder how drama follows him everywhere.

There was a yellow card for arguing with a refereeing decision. Two of his colleagues received the same from Espen Eskas after other flare-ups and Mourinho accused the Norwegian afterwards of being “arrogant.”

Even more spectacularly, he went on to question whether Fenerbahce’s alleged misfortune with refereeing decisions this season might be a consequence of match officials taking against him because of his four-match ban for directing verbal abuse at referee Antony Taylor in the 2023 Europa League final. Hopefully, he said, it was “just random” bad luck, though he could not be sure.

And, as if that was not wild enough, there was also the unexpected sub-plot, in the hours before kickoff, of him being caught up in a public slanging match with one of his own players, accusing him of being lazy and overweight.

Maybe it was a mistake on Allan Saint-Maximin’s part to think he could get away with publicising his discontent, via Instagram, about being left out of Fenerbahce’s squad for the trip to Scotland.

“It will take more than this to defeat me,” the former Newcastle United player, who had found out the news on his 28th birthday, wrote. “When a lie takes the elevator, the truth takes the stairs. It takes longer but it always arrives in the end.”

Another manager might have thought it better to deal with the matter quietly, away from the media, once the game was over and everyone had flown home.

But Mourinho, being Mourinho, was never going to let it go.

“I didn’t know Saint-Maximin was talented in poetry,” he responded. “He used a poem about life and stairs. I’m not bad at it (poetry), either. When a football player works well, works hard, trains every day, he is fit and can climb the stairs. He doesn’t need an elevator. However, if a player doesn’t train well, arrives late, is overweight, is not ready to play, he needs an elevator to go up. Because he gets tired quickly on the stairs.”

Would Carlo Ancelotti act this way before a key European assignment? Or Pep Guardiola? Or any other Champions League-winning manager? No – but Mourinho has always operated by his own rules. It is who he is and, at the age of 62, he is not going to change now. But perhaps it also helps to explain why he finds himself working in Turkey – deemed by Opta as only the 18th strongest league in the world, behind the second divisions in English and German football, among others – with a club that has won their league championship more times (28) than any other, but none since 2014.

Fenerbahce are seven points behind the unbeaten leaders, Galatasaray, with a game in hand. Another comeback is, of course, possible. More likely, however, it will end up being the club’s seventh second-placed finish in 11 seasons and another year as the nearly men of Turkey’s Super Lig.

Mourinho talked warmly about the Scottish people and it was a nice story he regaled on the day before the match about his “favourite memory” of Ibrox being the Old Firm derby he watched, unrecognised, from the stands in 2003.

It was shortly before his Porto side played Celtic in the UEFA Cup final and Mourinho had arrived in Glasgow on a spying mission to learn more about Martin O’Neill’s team. “You don’t know (I was there) because I was hidden,” he said. “Nobody knew me at the time. I finished the game, I walked away (with the crowd). Good times for me.”

Ultimately, though, his return to Ibrox, two decades on, left the clear impression that Mourinho is still walking that delicate line of falling out with, and ostracising, certain players, while inspiring a sense of togetherness among other members of the same team. It is never just a straightforward story of winning or losing.

Mourinho is booked as Fenerbahce crash out of Europe (Steve Welsh/Getty Images)

Saint-Maximin reacted to Mourinho’s accusations with another Instagram post – “lies produce flowers but not fruit” – showing some scales, the player’s weight and how it compared to previous seasons.

His brother, Kurtys, also weighed in. “Being special means showing class when the moment calls for it, not kicking a soldier when they’re down,” he wrote on Instagram. “Attacking someone who is at their lowest ebb with slander on their birthday is not classy, especially when you know there’s injustice involved. Dirty laundry should be washed in private!”

And Mourinho? He did not prolong that particular argument, but he did challenge anyone to disagree with his assessment that Fenerbahce were much better than the “very defensive” Rangers over two legs and had deserved to go through to the quarter-final.

“To be knocked out, I prefer it this way,” he said. “I know it hurts more, but I prefer it this way – being the best team, having a great comeback, deserving to win over 90 and 120 minutes.”

Fair enough. At this stage of his professional life, however, is it impudent to suggest that we may have seen the last of Mourinho as a serial champion?

If so, it has been an epic run. He has been winning trophies for almost a quarter of a century and, even in his not-quite-so-special years, there has been a Conference League victory with Roma and, before that, the League Cup and Europa League with Manchester United. A lean decade for Mourinho would, to many managers, be regarded as a golden era.

And yet, perhaps even a man with his immense self-belief has the occasional moment of insecurity when he considers his involvement in tournaments he used to scorn during his years with Chelsea, Real Madrid and Inter.

“For European finals, normally it depends on the club where you are,” he said, when asked whether he still backed himself to win the big trophies.

“I know I did it with Roma, who had never done it before. I know I did it with Porto, who did it one time in the last 25 years. But normally the big trophies are for the big teams and, if you look through the history of Turkish football, you will know it is almost an impossible mission even to get to the semi-finals.”

(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt/Getty Images)