How Jose Mourinho carefully demolished Wayne Rooney’s role
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Published 13/01/2017 at 13:18 GMT
Jose Mourinho may be overseeing Manchester United’s longest winning stretch in eight years, but his greatest feat has been quietly dismantling Wayne Rooney’s claims to a starting spot. Richard Jolly explains why.
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho speaks with Wayne Rooney
Image credit: Reuters
Jose Mourinho has mounted Manchester United’s longest winning run since Sir Alex Ferguson’s last great team in 2009. He has set about rebutting the notion that he is in terminal decline, a manager whose ideas have been rendered outdated by shifts in footballing thinking. He has seen his disciple Zlatan Ibrahimovic illustrate that he is not yesterday’s man either by averaging a goal a game in his last dozen appearances. He has even made Marcos Rojo look like a bona fide United player.
And yet a glance at the bench is required to identify one of his finest recent achievements. When United host Liverpool on Sunday, Wayne Rooney should start the afternoon sat behind Mourinho in the home dugout. It could be a record-breaking occasion, the day Rooney overtakes Sir Bobby Charlton and becomes the first man to score 250 goals for United. Or it could be an afternoon when he has a watching brief or a forgettable cameo that means celebrations are postponed again. As there were 340 days between his 244th United goal and the Charlton-levelling 249th, they often are.
The draining fixation with Rooney means nothing ever happens quietly or inconspicuously where he is concerned, but Mourinho has excelled by stripping controversy from the decision to downgrade him. It was a call that seemed too big for either Roy Hodgson or Louis van Gaal to make. The England manager took to omitting specialist midfielders to keep Rooney in the side in a deeper role. The Dutchman dropped him once, at Stoke, but restored him 48 hours later. Each remained a believer in the cult of his captain. Each intensified the focus on Rooney.
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England's forward Wayne Rooney shakes hands with England's coach Roy Hodgson as he is substituted with England's forward Marcus Rashford during Euro 2016 round of 16 football match between England and Iceland at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice on June
Image credit: AFP
Mourinho has shown the elite managers do not duck decisions. He has allied authoritativeness with subtlety. He has struck a blend, forever praising Rooney while making the occasional pointed reference to his lack of goals this season. He has been diplomatic, encouraging, soothing and occasionally pragmatic in his words. He has rendered it impossible to argue this is personal or that Rooney has been persecuted.
Since his September demotion, he has still played Rooney more than many think he should. Before it, he persisted with him longer than perhaps he should, inviting the suggestion he initially overrated Rooney. United could come to rue the points dropped while Mourinho persisted with his captain. Yet in the process, he provided incontrovertible evidence his eventual decision was correct. Seismic changes sometimes require extraordinary proof.
Antonio Conte got it in the form of embarrassing defeats that showed Chelsea’s 4-2-3-1 was broken, thus ushering in his preferred 3-4-2-1. Rooney’s wretched display in the 3-1 loss at Watford, following on from a similarly poor performance in the Manchester derby, proved similarly eloquent.
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Watford's Troy Deeney in action with Manchester United's Wayne Rooney
Image credit: Reuters
Even the sections of the punditocracy who had lamely repeated “Wayne is a great player” and presented Rooney as a solution rather than the problem were stripped of much of their defence. It showed Mourinho’s savviness is intact. He had acted with a politician’s sense of calculation. Inheriting Rooney, with his five-and-a-half year contract, huge salary, fame and powerbase equated to a hospital pass from United’s past, in Van Gaal and David Moyes, and Mourinho’s employer, in Ed Woodward. Mourinho caught it but avoided injury.
The subsequent four months have been notable in part for what has not happened. United’s sequence of autumn draws were damaging, but rarely blamed on Rooney’s absence. There were few suggestions he would have made a difference. He was displaced, in different ways, by the Mino Raiola Three, by Mourinho’s signings.
Ibrahimovic assumed the status of the pivotal attacker, ending the notion that Rooney should lead the line and, by performing better at 35 than the Englishman did at 31, both underlined his decline and illustrated it is not merely a matter of age. Paul Pogba took some of the striking sidekick’s duties, developing the on-field relationship with Ibrahimovic that Rooney lacked and becoming the player the Swede looked for, while proving at his best in a midfield trio and looking happier without a No. 10 to get in his way when he advanced. He has abolished Rooney's role.
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Manchester United's Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic reacts during the friendly Wayne Rooney testimonial football match between Manchester United and Everton at Old Trafford in Manchester, northwest England, on August 3, 2016.
Image credit: AFP
Henrikh Mkhitaryan became the cause celebre, the man whose omission from the team supporters bemoaned while accepting Rooney’s. The Armenian’s eventual inclusion revealed a player with more pace and skill and with the penchant for the spectacular Rooney once possessed. While Juan Mata has looked United’s classiest No. 10 this season without nailing down the position – sadly typically for the Spaniard – Mkhitaryan is seeming to shape a new, post-Rooney United.
So is Mourinho. He has married respect for past feats with a lack of sentiment when circumstances necessitate. Rooney was replaced against a weakened Hull, favourite opponents of his, in the quest for a second goal. His own search for his 250th was abandoned for the day.
Mourinho is a manager who has propelled players on to greatness but he has developed a sideline in easing out footballers of eminence. He did so controversially with Bastian Schweinsteiger and Iker Casillas. At Chelsea, he phased Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole out more shrewdly and sensitively. While Rooney will one day displace Charlton on United’s leaderboard, he has assumed Lampard’s mantle as the record scorer Mourinho has rebranded from starter to substitute without alienating anyone. The tactician has been tactful.
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