Jose Mourinho Is Nothing Without His Aura and Must Undergo a Personal Revolution

He was once the Special One, then the Happy One, but on Sunday Jose Mourinho was the Humiliated One. His return to Stamford Bridge as Manchester United manager indeed ended (and, in fact, started too) in embarrassment, with Chelsea inflicting a 4-0 defeat on the visitors and their former manager. They say you should never go back for a reason.

Even after everything endured by Mourinho last season, this was a personal nadir. He is no longer considered European football's go-to-guy for instant success. His demise at Chelsea, followed by his stuttering start at United, have tainted his reputation, compromising his standing and stature. Will he ever be the same manager again?

United are counting on it. They have nowhere else to turn if Mourinho consigns himself to the same managerial scrapheap David Moyes and Louis van Gaal were dumped on. But what if Mourinho has lost what made him Mourinho? What if the thing that once made him the greatest manager of his generation has vanished for good?

There are three primary classifications of coach. The disciplinarian is often painted as the stereotypical football manager, in the mould of someone like Sir Alex Ferguson. They rule with an iron fist (or a hair dryer), ensuring that nobody steps out of line. When they do, they are cast aside. Players are motivated by fear as much as anything else.

In the modern game, with players just as powerful as managers, this has become an approach of a bygone age. There is no place for disciplinarians in football any longer, with such a confrontational ethos likely to fracture a dressing room rather than galvanise it. 

And so tacticians have become the archetypal figurehead at the top of the sport. Pep Guardiola is this classification's vanguard, even if he can be a bit of a disciplinarian at times—as shown on Saturday when he locked his Manchester City players in their dressing room for 45 minutes after the full-time whistle. While football once valued natural leaders more than anyone else, now thinkers and plotters are the game's patriarchs. 

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Mourinho bridges the gap between disciplinarian and tactician. He relies on his aura as a character over his capability as a coach, with players buying into everything he says. That's an important part of what makes him what he is. Mourinho uses the media like no other manager in the European game, with the English press in particular conducive to such an approach.

At Chelsea, Mourinho created a siege mentality, imploring his players to question everything—question the opposition, question the media, question the officials. He did this at Real Madrid as well, instilling a sense of institutionalised bias at the club. Everything was stacked against his side, until everything was stacked against him personally.

It might be the case that the media in England have figured out Mourinho just as they eventually did in both Spain and Italy. His whisper in the ear of Antonio Conte following Sunday's humiliation at Stamford Bridge was like watching a worn-out magician struggle for tips on a promenade. We might have fallen for the trick once before, with Mourinho hoping coverage of his contrived touchline spat would outweigh that of the mistakes made by both his United players and himself, but now we can see the wires and the ace hiding up his sleeve. It's all rather sad to watch.

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Mourinho is nothing without his aura, and now that aura is most certainly beginning to fade. Managers of his kind can only keep up their impression until the first glint of fear starts to appear in their eyes. Look at Mourinho and fear is apparent. Fear that he no longer commands a dressing room like he once did. Fear that he can't control the media narrative. Fear that he might have lost it.

Of course, it's still far too early to write off Mourinho as United manager. Only nine fixtures of the 2016/17 campaign have been played, and it's indeed still feasible that the Old Trafford club will mount a title challenge, especially with Guardiola's Manchester City side faltering. 

But if Mourinho is to make a recovery, it won't be as the manager he carved out a niche for himself as. Aura is no longer enough to carry him, with the former Chelsea, Inter Milan, Porto and Real Madrid manager in need of a personal and tactical rethink. Ferguson was a master of reinventing himself to remain at the top of the sport, and his successor must strive to do the same now.

While there was undeniable symbolism to United's heavy defeat to Chelsea on Sunday, Mourinho chose to look at the performance and result through blinkers. "We made an incredible defensive mistake, I say incredible in capitals, in the first minute and then the game is different," he said, per Dominic Fifield of the Guardian. "It is one of those days when you give the advantage to opponents by doing nothing.

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"We put ourselves in a situation where we gave Chelsea the game they wanted to play: the block compact and low, as it was in the second half, and wait for the chances on the counter-attack. Football matches start at 0-0, this match started 1-0."

He wasn't wrong, with United playing straight into Chelsea's hands from the first whistle, but whether Mourinho publicly recognises it, he must have appreciated how Sunday's defeat to Chelsea could go down as a watershed moment for him personally. This was the starkest illustration yet that the Special One is no longer so special.

Those who find a way to keep themselves at the top of football management for more than a decade are few and far between. Even Guardiola, who took his first senior coaching job in 2007, is finding this, with his methods and ideologies coming under examination at Manchester City. What Mourinho is experiencing is natural but could still have a devastating impact on his career. 

Mourinho can no longer count on his aura, but now he must prove that he can cope without it even if at the moment it looks like he can't. The Portuguese was appointed to bring about revolution at Manchester United, but it is he who must undergo the revolution.