The Year Mourinho Supplanted Ferguson as Wenger's Bitterest Rival

Just like with a Mafia sit-down, the League Managers Association had suggested meeting on neutral ground in January 2005. Offering to act as a consigliere, they wanted to mediate a beef between bosses Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson so toxic it was generating more heat than a pan left on a stove.

This was Tony Soprano vs. Phil Leotardo heavy. It wasn't good for business. The authorities were taking an interest. Someone was going to get whacked at this rate.

Ruud van Nistelrooy wouldn't walk the Manchester Ship Canal by night for fear Martin Keown might be lurking in a tunnel, in full kit. 

In October the previous year, Arsenal's Invincibles (no more) had reacted to having a 49-game unbeaten run in the league end at Old Trafford by showering Manchester United's manager with pizza he hadn't ordered at full-time in the players' tunnel. It was a wound the Scot never allowed to form into a scab, let alone heal, such was his compulsion to pick at it.  

Just for a second, pause. Take a moment to construct a mental image of Ferguson being assaulted by a deep crust, or as Ashley Cole put it in his autobiography My Defence (h/t BBC Sport): "All eyes turned and all mouths gawped to see this pizza slip off that famous puce face and roll down his nice black suit."

To describe Ferguson as puce is brave, even for a ghostwriter.

The pizza perpetrator has never handed himself in, though Ferguson had his suspicions, as he revealed in his book, My Autobiography, per the Daily Mirror: "The next thing I knew I had pizza all over me. They say it was Cesc Fabregas who threw the pizza at me but to this day, I have no idea who the culprit was."



In fairness, Fabregas had a considerably better pass-completion rate in 2004/05 than he does today. 

Barely had Ferguson's suit returned from the dry cleaners when at the turn of the year he launched a series of Wenger-baiting missiles, labelling the Frenchman "a disgrace" in the buildup to the corresponding fixture in February, per the Independent (h/t BBC Sport).

"He ran at me with hands raised saying 'what do you want to do about it?'" said Ferguson, of Wenger's tunnel metamorphosis into Ray Winstone. It sounds like he was lucky it was pizza he got hit with and not a snooker ball in a sock.

"To not apologise for the behaviour of the players to another manager is unthinkable. It's a disgrace, but I don't expect Wenger to ever apologise, he's that type of person."

JON SUPER/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

Wenger responded in a Wenger-like way by claiming he had "no diplomatic relations with him (Ferguson)." He also made a vow it's fair to say he has struggled to keep over the years: "I will never answer to any provocation from him any more."

He concluded his lament with a pop at the press for good measure: "What I don't understand is that he does what he wants and you (the press) are all at his feet."

In October last year, when Wenger was asked by the Guardian's Daniel Taylor if he could ever envisage calling a truce with Jose Mourinho, he replied: "I will leave you, and your love story with him, to continue without interference." 

It's hard to decipher whether the faint sound that can be heard in the distance is an echo, or Wenger's persecution complex letting off a little steam. Mourinho and Ferguson both felt the same way about the Arsenal manager. It's like children who are convinced their parents love another sibling more.

Relations were so strained between Ferguson and Wenger in January 2005 that the Metropolitan Police issued a terse public warning with regard to the conduct of both managers, amid fears loose tongues on the touchline could spawn loose fists in the stands.

Government ministers sniffed around disapprovingly too, a dog looking for a target to relieve itself. Football is political enough to know that when politicians proffer a view on the national game it is either to cash in on its easy populism or moralise on its decaying values. This was very much in the latter camp.

An equally aghast public reached into the bag for more popcorn.

This was the best managerial spat since Brian Clough and Don Revie went at it live on a special edition of Calendar for ITV called Goodbye Mr. Clough on 12 September, 1974, the day the former was sacked by Leeds United after just 44 of them in charge at Elland Road.

No vine can compete with television gold so good that Mr. T would be proud to wear it around his neck: 

These days Wenger and Ferguson may share the odd glass of expensive red wine—make that a bottle—but back then, the relationship between them was so bitter when Arsenal and Manchester United used to go at it players were handed cans of Boddingtons in water breaks. The weary acceptance of one another that imbued their final years of touchline jousting was still a long way off at this point.

There was genuine nastiness to the fixture that began with the managers' mutual contemptuousness and bled through to the players.

The two clubs had history. In 1990, the Football Association took the unprecedented step of deducting league points from both clubs after a mass brawl broke out at Old Trafford involving all but one of the 22 players.

The seed had been sown, though it was only when Wenger pitched up in north London that the spite was ever harvested.

From the moment Wenger first passed through Highbury's marble halls in 1996 to Ferguson signing off at Manchester United with a Premier League title in 2013, the pair less dominated English football's landscape than painted it themselves.

In 17 seasons in opposition, they oversaw 13 Premier League titles, two UEFA Champions Leagues, six FA Cups and two League Cups. Only on four occasions in that period did another club—Chelsea three times and Manchester City once—break their stranglehold on top spot when it mattered most in May.

To say it is one of football's greatest rivalries does it ill service. It's hard to think of two figures so totemic in any field to have stayed at the top so long, to push one another to build even better sides, to have been such an enduring part of all our sporting lives.

For all his detractors, when Wenger finally steps down a light will go out on an era he somehow keeps shining just by being here.

Few could have imagined, then, with Wenger and Ferguson's rivalry at fever pitch in 2005, it would be the former's fractured relationship with Mourinho that would prove to be the year's most discussed managerial spat. 

At the time, in late January, the Guardian's David Lacey wrote: "Mourinho briefly became caught up with Ferguson's mind games when Chelsea met United in the first leg of the Carling Cup semi-finals, but the Portuguese should not feel the need to make this a three-way affair.

"So long as his side keep winning he can remain an amused and maybe bemused bystander."

It seems he was writing more in hope than with any prescience, even if in that first season—2004/05—Mourinho made every press conference a standing-room-only event such was his magnetism.

English football was smitten with Mourinho. He'd smile with his eyes as the charismatic tend to do, but every so often as the campaign wore on he would bare his teeth just a little—a gentle reminder to the watching world he had a full set if ever they were needed. He'd snap here and there, a lion cub in a zoo forewarning its handlers he is tame on his terms not theirs. 

In comparison, this season it's as though he has folded himself inside out. Handsome if a little narcissistic, he presented himself as Dorian Gray in 2005. Now he is showing us the portrait in the attic.

If Mourinho went on an impressionist comedy show as he is today, you'd say the act had a good likeness and nailed a few of the mannerisms, but something about it didn't quite ring true.  

What Mourinho was smart to do back then was to keep winning before indulging in any serious talking. He marked his first season in England by guiding Chelsea to a Premier League and League Cup double. The former was won at a canter, as Chelsea finished the campaign 12 points ahead of second-place Arsenal, 18 in front of Manchester United. 

It is rarely mentioned in dispatches written of the 2004/05 campaign that Chelsea supplanted as champions an Arsenal side arguably the greatest in English football history. It's probably more often remarked upon that Claudio Ranieri had left solid foundations for Mourinho to work from.

While Wenger and Ferguson were throwing pizza (or at least having it thrown at them) and verbal haymakers, Mourinho was ringside—a future champion in-waiting—weighing up which challenger he'd deign to get in the ring with him next.

The following season, when he retained the title with Chelsea, he would not be the new boy looking to make friends. 

Mourinho by his nature is a street fighter, a Sonny Liston type. Stick a pair of gloves on him and you'd want to check first they hadn't been dipped in cement. Maybe he saw in Ferguson, a faithful son of the tough Govan area of Glasgow, Scotland, a mirror image of himself. He's smart enough to work out there's only one person who gets hurt when you punch glass.

The ever-erudite Wenger, on the other hand, for all his range might just have a glass chin.

August 2005 brought a new season. Lest it not be forgotten it was Wenger who threw the first serious punch, per BBC Sport: "I know we live in a world where we have only winners and losers, but once a sport encourages teams who refuse to take the initiative, the sport is in danger."

And so it began. Herein lies the crux of what makes Wenger and Mourinho so incongruous. Wenger's Arsenal had been left in the slipstream of Mourinho's Chelsea in the previous campaign. Yet here he was delivering a dig at Chelsea so thinly veiled it could have been written on tracing paper.

Stick a pragmatist in a room with a romantic and the only thing they'll agree on is that a drink is required.

Wenger would always rather be a beautiful loser than ugly winner, north London's natural heir to Danny Blanchflower. That he felt compelled to talk about Chelsea's style, despite the fact Mourinho and his side had delivered a near-immaculate campaign, will have enraged the Portuguese. 

To Mourinho, this obsession with aesthetics is self-indulgent to the point of being nauseating, if not outright offensive. For all his Machiavellian posturing, he is very matter of fact, less calculating and more emotional than many perceive him to be. He operates in simple terms, he deals in black and white; winning and losing. 

The grey areas in between, the shades in which Wenger sees the world, are to Mourinho no more than excuses for underachievement.

It was not until October, though, that Mournho bit back with any venom, and even then he would argue he was goaded into delivering his most infamous put-down in a catalogue full of them.

Chelsea's draw at Everton and Carling Cup defeat at home to Charlton Athletic had led Wenger, when pressed, to proffer his view "a little bit of the belief has gone" from Mourinho's side, per the Guardian's Jon Brodkin. All fairly innocuous stuff, especially given the context. Chelsea were 14 points ahead of Arsenal at the time having won their first nine league games.  

It is safe to say it was not a remark deemed innocuous in the bowels of Stamford Bridge. In the manager's office, Mourinho was formulating a comeback so barbed it's a wonder it didn't draw blood when it came tumbling out of his mouth.

It is recounted via the Guardian below: 

"

Wenger has a real problem with us and I think he is what you call in England a voyeur.

He is someone who likes to watch other people. There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families.

Wenger must be one of them – it is a sickness. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea.

I might be worried if my team made a defensive mistake. I shouldn't be worried about what Arsenal did at Tottenham. They are always speaking about the other families. These are our secrets.

I don't know if he wants my job, I don’t know. He loves Chelsea.

"

Mourinho was never likely to have stayed a bystander for long. He less nibbled at Wenger's remark than sucker-punched him so far below the belt it's a wonder he didn't connect with his counterpart's shins.

It was a classless classic quote, instantly stitching itself into football’s rich tapestry from the moment it left the Portuguese's mouth. 

In John Cross' book Arsene Wenger: The Inside Story of Arsenal Under Wenger, the Daily Star reporter David Woods recounts how the way Mourinho delivered it to his assembled audience intimated it was premeditated.

Both Mourinho and Wenger had been around long enough to know the voyeur line would stick. We're still talking about it 11 years on.

"It seemed pre-planned because he had obviously had enough of Wenger having what he saw were constant digs at him and Chelsea, and this small insult was the final straw…I remember, after Mourinho had spoken and had spoken at length, asking him another question. 

"Mourinho replied: 'I think you have got enough.' It seemed as if…he knew it would hurt Wenger."

It hurt Wenger sufficiently enough for him to consider legal action, although it ultimately never went that far.

Everyone present that day will have known before they had transcribed their notes that Mourinho had delivered, gift-wrapped, tomorrow morning's back page. It might even sneak on a couple of front pages on a slow news day. 

Wenger was no choirboy, nor was he squeamish when things got dirty having regularly gone toe-to-toe with Ferguson. He was used to other managers trying to wind him up, he was a quiet master of it himself, but this was different. It felt personal, vindictive, nasty, violating even. 

When Wenger next spoke to the press, he seemed as exasperated as he was angry, per the Telegraph's David Edbrooke: 

"

He's out of order, disconnected with reality and disrespectful. When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent.

I was asked a question about Chelsea and gave my honest answer, just like I expect any other manager to do when he is asked about Arsenal.

"

Initially Mourinho was unrepentant, per the Guardian's Brodkin and Matt Scott.

"At Stamford Bridge, we have a file of quotes from Mr Wenger about Chelsea football club in the last 12 months—it is not a file of five pages. It is a file of 120 pages," he shot back, not sounding at all like he was in any way obsessed with Wenger. All perfectly normal behaviour, in Stasi-controlled East Berlin.

Even though Mourinho's emergence as a serial winner, surprisingly perhaps, never led to any serious spats with Ferguson, it did seem to soften his and Wenger's stance towards one another. 

From 2005 onwards, Wenger may still have hated Ferguson, but there's little doubt he hated Mourinho more.

Over the years, Mourinho has on occasion shown contrition for his voyeur line, accepting he overstepped the mark. The last time he apologised for it was in 2014, though it was undermined somewhat by the fact it came just days after he had equally famously branded Wenger a "specialist in failure."

The American writer and fellow fearless agent provocateur Gore Vidal once said: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

Mourinho probably has his own ideas for an epitaph, but if the cap fits.