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Graham Hunter, Spain writerDec 3, 2024, 05:00 AM ET
- Graham Hunter is a Barcelona-based freelance writer for ESPN.com who specializes in La Liga and the Spanish national team.
If Ernesto Valverde can finally put one over on one of the most vilified coaches in modern European football on Wednesday, then this will have been one hell of a few days for the Athletic Club coach after beating Villarreal in LaLiga at the weekend.
There won’t be a greater contrast in personalities anywhere in this week of European football than when chess-playing, cycling-addicted, talented-photographer Valverde, who loves playing Rolling Stones covers with his group, comes face-to-face with Jose Mourinho again.
The occasion: Bilbao’s red-and-white Basque-only club travelling to play Turkish giants Fenerbahce for the first time in the clubs’ respective histories. (Basque meaning the 2.8 million people who were born in, or emanate from, that northern semi-autonomous region of Spain.)
The competition: UEFA’s Europa League which neither Valverde or Athletic have won (two lost finals for the 60-year-old as a player and coach, with one for the club in 2012), against the Süper Lig side coached by Mourinho whose 2003 victory in this competition launched his successful but perpetually polarizing personality on the football world.
Times are good for Valverde because Athletic Club recently beat Spanish and European champions Real Madrid for the first time in a decade and then, four nights later, overcame their most threatening competitors for fourth place in LaLiga (Villarreal) and the multi-millions which Champions league qualification would bring. Should Los Leones (the Lions) defeat Fener this week it would ensure they stay, at least, second-top in the 36-team Europa League table and set them up for direct qualification for the Round of 16 in March, bouncing straight over the unwanted playoff round in February.
Ernesto Valverde and Jose Mourinho will face off when Athletic Club and Fenerbache play in the UEFA Europa League on Wednesday. (Photo by Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images) (Photo by Ali Atmaca/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Given that Athletic are reigning Copa del Rey holders, fourth in LaLiga, second in their European ranking, and their utterly sensational San Mames stadium is going to host the Europa League final in May, these are bountiful times indeed. But it’s a testing trip to Turkey this week and while Valverde will be paying absolutely no attention to the past, his head-to-head record against Mourinho is poor: P3, L2, D1.
Meanwhile, Mourinho has coached six times against Athletic and won all six — on a rather brutal 23-3 goal aggregate.
So there’s sporting “morbo” in this one, as the Spanish like to say. (An expression that conveys there’s an extra fascination in a sporting clash for any one of a variety of spicy reasons.)
But sport wouldn’t draw us in with its perpetual siren-song and then hook us, addictively, if it weren’t for the human-interest, the dramatis-personae who continuously add the most glorious soap-opera backstories to elite-level athletic confrontations. It’s a heady, powerful, voyeuristic mix.
Valverde and Mourinho are polar opposites in more ways than the simple fact that the Spaniard was a fine professional player signed for Barcelona by Johan Cruyff and who racked up 360 senior club appearances, while the Portuguese talked his way into the sport by becoming Sir Bobby Robson’s translator.
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Their personalities are also anathema to one another.
Your view on Mourinho may differ from mine (and you’re welcome to your opinion) because some people will use trophy-success as a “get out of jail free” card to excuse execrable behaviour. And there’s no arguing that the man who demanded to be known as the “Special One” at Chelsea, but now merits the “Special Once” tag, has a shimmering trophy record.
But I’d justify my description of him as obnoxious and dislikable by citing: his false accusations against referee Anders Frisk in 2005 which led to death threats for the Swedish referee and Frisk’s subsequent choice to retire prematurely; his chasing of referee Anthony Taylor down into the VIP parking garage of Budapest’s Puskas Arena last year and abusive haranguing of the man after Sevilla beat Roma in the Europa League final (it earned Mourinho a four-match UEFA ban); his cowardly and dangerous poking of Barcelona coach Tito Villanova’s eye during a 2011 Clasico; his alleged sexual harassment and verbal abuse of Chelsea FC doctor Eva Carneiro (Chelsea and Mourinho settled her constructive dismissal claim); and the list could go on and on right up until him saying last month that the Turkish League “smelled bad.”
Rather than outright detracting from Mourinho’s coaching ability and trophy success, it’s a parallel pipeline in his career — a flow of silver accompanied by a flow of sewage.
Valverde simply couldn’t be more different.
He has published a couple of glossy, hard-backed volumes of his own photography, to great acclaim, but asked whether he was proud of his skills and achievements answered: “Proud? I don’t like that word and I don’t like all this about feeling pride. I enjoyed the process of putting the books together, I love taking photos, I did my best but they’re big expensive books — I probably only sold about 10 with me buying half of those!”
The ultimate in self-deprecation.
play
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Watch epic Jose Mourinho rant after Fenerbahçe win
Jose Mourinho, in one of his ‘greatest ever’ rants, didn’t hold back on what he thought of Turkish football and referee Atilla Karaoglan after his side scored a 102nd-minute winner over Trabzonspor.
Valverde loves telling stories against himself. For example, he once admitted to Relevo magazine: “It’s true that every so often the name of one of my players might escape me during a team talk but because those around me know what I’m like. They’ll say ‘De Marcos!’ and I’ll go… ‘..that’s who I meant…!’ “I spent months calling Mikel Vesga (who may start in Turkey) Kepa by mistake because that’s his dad’s name and we played together when I was younger.”
Valverde also told his great friend Lu Martin, for Relevo, that he truly believes he’s got some sort of magnetic attraction for the cops and always has.
He and a group of friends — when they were teenagers in the 1970’s — were playing in the local hills and got mistaken for a terrorist unit; he was arrested and taken to the police station for taking photos in an abandoned factory in Vitoria (his home town) but released when a neighbour spotted the arrest, alerted Valverde’s mum who called one of the factory owners who was from the family neighbourhood.
Even when Valverde was appointed as Espanyol coach (which was last time he went to the Europa League final, a penalty shootout defeat to Sevilla at Hampden in 2007) he was stopped by the Barcelona cops at a checkpoint because they thought he’d stolen the flash car he was driving which matched the description of a motor for which they were on the lookout.
He’s also in awe of the club he works for, but a little cynical about the myth of great coaches, a myth which Mourinho is dedicated not only to propagating but dominating.
Valverde says: “Nobody should have any doubt that the most significant part of whether a group of players function together, or not, is to what degree they think you’ll be able to help them to be better or not. From the moment you take charge of the dressing room they are super-intelligent about weighing you up and working out what you can or can’t do for them.”
On his club, which he loves, and which he takes to Istanbul this week: “It’s a little bit of a miracle that Athletic, despite having always committed to only playing Basque-born or Basque-educated players are one of only three Spanish clubs never to have been relegated! You’re always exposed to that one year when things go badly and, by the relentless logic of probabilities, you go down. It’s happened to everyone but us, Madrid and Barcelona.”
Neither victory nor defeat in Istanbul will change Valverde’s personality one iota — nor, even, would the awesome idea of him winning Athletic their first-ever European trophy at their own La Catredal in Bilbao next May.
But I admire him very much and while you are perfectly free to choose who you’re cheering on this Thursday, you can take it that I’ll be rooting for the good guy.
