Jose Mourinho’s downfall has been discussed extensively over recent weeks. Chelsea knows that it takes a proactive, not reactive, manager to succeed.
As Jose Mourinho further spirals downward after taking a job out of spite, interesting notions have been brought up about him. Namely, how did everything go so wrong for a manager that was once top of the world?
The simple answer is that Mourinho became a parody of himself. His legacy will be that of a man who once had a counter tactic to everything. But whereas his counters were once proactive, they have since become reactive. And football does not reward the reactive for long.
Chelsea will know this notion well. Every Premier League title came as a result of bending the rest of the league to the will of the Blues. And whenever the Blues struggled, it was often because they became stuck in a cycle of reactivity to others. It takes a proactive manager to find success in football.
Look at Mourinho’s first stint at Chelsea. He came into a league dominated by 4-4-2 and used the 4-3-3 formation. The extra man in midfield allowed his team to dominate the rest for two seasons. He bent the league to his will.
Mourinho continued this trend while in Italy with Inter Milan. Specifically, he created a way that countered Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona at the time. That earned him the Real Madrid job.
Mourinho eventually returned to Chelsea while still being a proactive manager. Whenever the Blues were level late in a match, he would bring on a striker and make the formation a 3-5-2. He figured that the risk of dropping one point was worth it if he could still earn all three. He was proactive, not reactive.
And the 2014/2015 season started with some of the most buccaneering football seen in recent years. Chelsea forced others to adapt to their play. That is, until they lost to Tottenham Hotspur early in the new year. From there, Mourinho made his system reactionary. With his will no longer being enforced on the league, Chelsea limp to the title before imploding the next season. A similar story played out at Manchester United. As soon as something went wrong any season, Mourinho would revert to reacting to others. When he did, he lost the ability to control his own destiny.
This same trend has repeated itself over and over. Antonio Conte’s 3-4-3 dominated the league with lightning fast attacking football, but when he started to change things in reaction to others, he lost control of the league. Guardiola brought his style to England and rather than adapt to the league, he forced the league to adapt to him. Proactive beats reactive when given enough time.
Maurizio Sarri and Chelsea must keep this in mind as this season progresses. It is easy to react to conceding goals by swapping N’Golo Kante and Jorginho or making the defense less zonal. It is easy to pull the plug on something that does not work the first time. But in doing so, Chelsea will forfeit the ability to bend the league to their will. And once they forfeit that ability, they will be unable to win anything of note.
That is not to say a manager cannot make adjustments when something goes wrong. But the best managers make those adjustments before anything goes wrong at all. Sarri is a smart manager who is very open about how long it will take to implement his style. As long as he sticks with it, he will likely fall on the proactive side of things.
And given Chelsea’s history with being proactive, a title is sure to follow at some point. But the Blues must not fall into the same trap that Mourinho did. The Blues must not be afraid to be the better team. The team that is the protagonist is often the team that wins. Mourinho opted to be the man with a counter to everything until he had a counter to nothing. That has been a major factor in his downfall and others must take note.