Why Jose Mourinho isn’t going to be sacked by Fenerbahce… yet

It was just under a year ago that Fenerbahce’s Sukru Saracoglu stadium was full of wild-eyed fans, who had queued around the block to get in and were climbing barriers, burning flares, thoroughly fired up for one of the biggest moments in not just Fenerbahce’s history, but Turkish football too.

This wasn’t for a game, but for the unveiling of Jose Mourinho as their new head coach.

Actually, unveiling doesn’t really do it justice. It felt more like a cross between a coronation and one of those cult rallies where people whip themselves into such a frenzy that they start talking in tongues and pass out. You can see why they were excited. This was one of the most successful managers in the world: double Champions League winner, domestic champion in four different countries, good with soundbites — you’ve heard of him. Even if his best days are in the past, he was here to end their decade-long title drought.

It was a different story last weekend. As Fenerbahce shuffled to a nondescript 2-1 win over Eyupspor, Galatasaray were collecting the required points to retain the Turkish Super Lig with two games to spare. It extended Fenerbahce’s title-less run to 11 seasons, which was already a record dry spell for the club, and the fans were done with it.

This time, the stands were virtually empty. Only a little more than 10,000 showed up to the 50,000 capacity stadium. Rather than roars of thrilled welcome, most of the noises from those that did turn up were whistles and boos. Most of the opprobrium was directed at club president Ali Koc and the club’s board, but this season has been such a disappointment that some of the blame must be apportioned to the man in the dugout.

Usually, this would signal the end for Mourinho. Unsuccessful Fenerbahce coaches do not get a second season. They usually barely get one season. Since Koc was elected in 2018, the average tenure for Mourinho’s 12 predecessors was a shade under 24 games. He sacked his first manager, Phillip Cocu, three months after appointing him and has never looked back.

But Mourinho is staying. Speaking to the media in early May, Koc said: “We want to continue with Jose Mourinho for stability.”

Set aside for a moment any amusement at the idea of Jose Mourinho equalling stability. The question is: why? Why are the club keeping faith with him, after a season that has not just been bad, but at times farcical?

Fenerbahce will finish the season second in the Super Lig: not the end of the world, in most contexts. But when you’re finishing second for the fourth season in a row, three of which have been to your fiercest rivals, and you haven’t won the title since 2014… it might as well be nowhere.

Fenerbahce will finish second for the fourth season in succession (Arife Karakum/Anadolu via Getty Images)

There could have been some mitigation in other competitions, but they lost to Lille in the Champions League qualifiers, then rather embarrassingly to Rangers in the Europa League second round. And then they were knocked out of the Turkish Cup by… well, yeah, obviously it was them.

They have played Galatasaray three times this season, losing twice, with the other a 0-0 draw. Maybe even worse than not beating their hated rivals is that Galatasaray have become so comfortable that they’ve indulged in some pretty intricate banter at Fenerbahce’s expense. After a particularly lively derby in April, they put a South Park-style cartoon on their social media channels depicting Mourinho as so obsessed with them that he ended in an asylum wearing a straitjacket, with the caption ‘Galatasaray delirtir’ — ‘Galatasaray makes you crazy’.

They were at it again in the aftermath of sealing the title, with another cartoon mocking Mourinho, depicting him as a down-and-out feeding pigeons in the park as Galatasaray celebrate their league title.

In his defence, results haven’t been horrendous across the board. They have a points-per-game tally that might have won the title in previous seasons. There have been emphatic victories and dramatic ones. They’ve only lost in the league three times, but even that’s a double-edged sword: those three defeats have been to Galatasaray and their other big Istanbul rivals, Besiktas.

Results are one thing, but the quality of football is another. Under Ismail Kartal last season, as well as racking up a record total of 99 points, they were attractive to watch and at least gave the impression of a progressive team. Under Mourinho, that hasn’t been the case, and has led to increasing amounts of disquiet among the fans.

The team has, in parts of the season, been so bad that the paranoia and conspiracy theories that most fanbases in Turkish football are prone to, have been rendered irrelevant. Sure, you can complain about bad refereeing decisions and think it’s all a plot against you… but would it have made a difference?

Mourinho has tried to weaponise that paranoia, but that has merely served as a distraction from the actual football. “The management encouraged him to constantly talk about the alleged system set up against Fenerbahce off the field,” says Emrah Tunay, lifelong fan and head of the Fenerbahce Volunteers Association — remember the name, he’ll become more important shortly.

“As a result, Mourinho focused not on football, the formation and development of the team, or the opponents — but on this set-up against Fenerbahce.”

Mourinho’s side have only lost three times this season but are eight points adrift of champions Galatasaray (SIMON WOHLFAHRT/AFP via Getty Images)

Then you have the classic Jose antics. In some respects, you might think Mourinho has simply leant into the adversarial and chaotic nature of Turkish football, and his constant complaints about referees certainly fit with the general vibe, but there have been moments that scandalised people even in that context.

Two of them came against Galatasaray: in February, he was accused of racism after declaring that Galatasaray’s coaches were “jumping around like monkeys” in an attempt to influence the officials — he denied the accusations and later said they “boomeranged” against Galatasaray, but still received a two-match touchline ban. Then, after a Turkish Cup tie in April in which four players were sent off, Mourinho was given another three-match ban after grabbing the nose of his opposite number Okan Buruk, who (somewhat theatrically) threw himself to the floor.

And so, we return to the question of why Mourinho is staying.

Fenerbahce’s perspective is that not much good has come of chopping and changing coaches over the last decade, so they might as well give consistency a try. There is an understanding within the club that it is challenging for a foreign manager to adapt to the unique pressures of Turkish football in their first season, so the hope is that having become acclimatised, success will come next season.

There’s also the trifling matter of how much it would cost to sack Mourinho. He signed a two-year contract with an annual salary of around €10million (£8.4m, $11.3m), so they would need to hand over that amount to cut ties with him, which wouldn’t be ideal. That said, Koc has already burned through enough money over the last seven years, so what’s another €10m?

Perhaps a bigger reason is that Mourinho is just too closely tied to the embattled president. Koc was elected in 2018 and the longer his tenure has gone on without a title win, the more desperate he has appeared, and the further his popularity has fallen. “As soon as Ali Koc took office, he erased the club’s entire institutional memory,” says Tunay. “He has failed to achieve any sporting success and has not fulfilled any of his promises.”

There is a slight element of positivity towards him (at a recent meeting of the club’s honorary members, someone read a poem in support of Koc), but before Mourinho’s appointment he looked almost certain to lose last summer’s presidential election to his predecessor Aziz Yildirim, who claimed that he had agreed terms with a big name manager should he be elected… Jose Mourinho. The timeline of events is a little fuzzy, but Yildirim met Mourinho in London and Rome in the spring of 2024, and, according to him at least, reached a broad agreement.

However, Koc then dispensed with Kartal and pulled the simple but devastatingly effective move of agreeing terms with Mourinho himself, terms finalised when the Portuguese was in London to attend the Champions League final at Wembley. Mourinho was then flown to Istanbul and that remarkable unveiling the following day, which simultaneously scored the big name for the club and took Koc’s opponent out at the knees. Koc maintained that he had made contact with Mourinho months before, predating Yildirim’s interest — which may well be true, but from the outside it looked like ruthless politicking.

There were raucous scenes at Mourinho’s unveiling last summer (YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images)

Either way, he won another three-year term at a canter, which wouldn’t have been possible without this marquee, Hail Mary appointment. “He won with the wind of Mourinho,” said one figure close to the club who, like all consulted for this article, wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships.

Koc was gambling on Mourinho the perennial winner: actually, not so much merely gambling as pushing all of his chips, plus his car keys and whatever else he had in his pockets, into the middle of the table. The failure of that gamble, so far at least, slightly counterintuitively provides another explanation for why Mourinho is staying. Because short of persuading Pep Guardiola to come to Istanbul, where can Koc go from here? There’s no flashier upgrade, no more glamorous rabbit to pull from the hat. “If he were to sack Mourinho, who he sold to the public as a Messiah last summer, there would be no bigger name to sell,” said an executive at another Turkish club.

But this leads to another complicating factor in Mourinho’s future. Technically, Koc should be in place for another two years, but his unpopularity is such that an emergency election will be held this year. The question is: when? Koc wants it to happen in September, a time deliberately chosen because that will be after the summer transfer window closes, meaning there is time to sign a few exciting players and strengthen his hand, while at the same time weakening any potential rival who might come with transfer-related promises of their own.

Koc and Mourinho at his unveiling last year (YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images)

However, there are moves afoot for it to happen much sooner, which is where Tunay comes in. He has led a campaign to force an emergency election this summer, well before September. The club’s constitution states that if someone can gather the signatures of 20 per cent of the club’s paying members, backing what amounts to a vote of no confidence in the current regime, then an extraordinary congress of the members will be forced and a fresh election held.

“We have launched a petition campaign to bring this situation to an end and fulfil the wishes of the fans,” says Tunay. “Our greatest hope is that Fenerbahce will elect a new president as a result of the election and that this dark period will finally come to an end.”

For various reasons, it’s slightly tricky to ascertain the exact number of paying members, and thus the number of signatures required, but Tunay and his team think 12,000 will comfortably do it.

Koc has previously said he wouldn’t run if that happens, but most observers suspect that ultimately he will. Either way, if Yildirim decides to run (he has yet to publicly say either way, but the expectation is that he will) he’ll be the favourite to win and return to the presidency that he lost to Koc in 2018. And assuming he does run and does win, will he keep Mourinho? At present, that’s unclear: on one hand, Mourinho is the manager he wanted anyway, but on the other he’s now associated with a) Koc and b) failure.

There is also the possibility that Mourinho will go of his own accord. He recently admitted meeting another club in January (reportedly a team in Saudi Arabia), and when asked by the media about his future, he was non-committal. “I am not speaking about next season. I will speak internally, not to the media. If there is something, out of respect to the president and the board, I will not bring it into the public.”

When Mourinho was appointed, it felt in some ways that he and Turkish football was a perfect union, a coach who thrives on chaos and disruption going to the home of those things. Ultimately, it has proved very imperfect, but the way things look at the moment, we could be in for a lot more of it.

(Ali Atmaca/Anadolu via Getty Images)

This post was originally published on this site