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Some had already written off José Mourinho, his start as coach of Tottenham Hotspur was bumpy. But after about a year, the Spurs are leaders. And the former title collector Mourinho awakens new hope in the fans before the endurance test in Liverpool.
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London – José Mourinho received his first trophy as coach of Tottenham Hotspur even before the top game against English football champions Liverpool.
The Premier League named him November Coach of the Month – which he commented with unusually cautious comments. “It says Coach of the Month, but for me it means Team of the Month or Employee of the Month,” said Mourinho. But the 57-year-old has other titles in his sights with the traditional club.
The game on Wednesday evening with Jürgen Klopp’s team could point the way. With an away win in Anfield, Mourinho’s eleven could at least slightly distance the currently equal point competitors and underline their ambitions for the title. Even if hardly anyone in north London has said it so far – under Mourinho the secret hope of the first championship in 60 years is growing.
When the Portuguese joined Spurs in November 2019, it was different. His reputation was cracked. At the second Chelsea engagement and at Man United he had been fired, his commitment to Tottenham controversial. Many thought Mourinho’s time was up, and few welcomed the title collector with open arms. After all, he had won trophies with Chelsea and Man United only half a year before his release – with the Blues even the championship, with the Red Devils the Europa League.
“To dare is to do” is the Spurs club motto, freely translated: Who dares wins. At first, the risk for club boss Daniel Levy, who was the driving force behind the star commitment, didn’t seem to work. In Mourinho’s first season, the Spurs only ended up in sixth place, the Champions League finalist from 2019 missed the qualification for the premier class. For some, “The Special One” was considered a failure by the Londoners.
Less than six months later, Tottenham has been unbeaten in eleven games and is in first place in the table. Manchester United were dealt 6-1, Man City and arch-rivals Arsenal were each defeated 2-0. And after going 0-0 at Chelsea, Mourinho announced: “A draw at Stamford Bridge is actually a good thing (…). But nobody in my dressing room was happy with it, and that’s fantastic.”
The trainer is working on a new winning mentality. “The history of football is that the teams with the good guys never win,” grumbled Mourinho in a scene in the Amazon documentary series “All Or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur”. In fact, the team seems changed. Unlike under Mauricio Pochettino, it sometimes wins ugly when it has to. “If you don’t like to see it, you shouldn’t watch it,” Mourinho said on Sky Sports.
His relationship with the players is considered excellent. The storm duo with Harry Kane and former Bundesliga attacker Heung-Min Son, who together scored 19 of 24 league goals, is in top form. The new signing Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, who used to play for Bayern, turned out to be a real reinforcement. Even Tanguy Ndombele’s record purchase, whom Mourinho had sharply criticized in the summer, is now flourishing. The game in Anfield will be a real indicator of what is possible this season.
The fans are used to disappointments for a long time. The Spurs have been almost chronically trophy-free for decades in England – similar to Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga – as a team that is often close, but always misses the great success in the last meters. Mourinho is more of the opposite and maybe the man Tottenham Hotspur missed for the title.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201215-99-700508 / 2
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