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Mourinho's soldiers - Ten years on from Inter Milan's historic treble

Inter Milan's players celebrate with the trophy after winning the UEFA Champions League final in 2010  - afp
Inter Milan's players celebrate with the trophy after winning the UEFA Champions League final in 2010 - afp

With a few more greys on the sides and a couple of unfamiliar lines around their eyes, the blood brothers of the 2010 Inter Milan side gathered around their computer screens last weekend to reflect, once again, on the season in which they conquered all they could conquer.

A digital reunion is not quite the same as a physical reunion, but the connection clearly remains strong between the players and the manager who led the club to its greatest triumph. Jose Mourinho was on the call, clad in a simple white t-shirt and a pair of glasses, and one can only imagine his sense of nostalgia as they looked back at what they achieved a decade ago.

Javier Zanetti, Wesley Sneijder, Diego Milito, Marco Materazzi and the rest. These were Mourinho’s men, Mourinho’s soldiers. The strength of the emotional bonds he forged with this group of players was reflected in the strength of the team, which remains the only Italian side to win the treble of Serie A, Coppa Italia and the Champions League in a single campaign.

So many of those players were at the height of their powers in that season, and as time has passed it has become clear that this was Mourinho’s peak, too. Inter were organised, versatile, dangerous and, perhaps most importantly of all, totally in thrall to a leader who had earned their love as well as their respect.

“I was ready to kill and die for him,” said Sneijder, a few months after Inter’s Champions League final victory over Bayern Munich. “Jose always made it clear that we could do more,” said Zanetti earlier this month. “Mourinho knows everything about everyone and always says the right things,” said Materazzi, the hard man who famously crumpled into Mourinho’s arms, tears streaming down both their faces, after that victory in the Santiago Bernabeu.

It is evident, ten years later, that the 2009/10 season marked the pinnacle for Mourinho as a psychological manager. Inter may not have been his best footballing team, in terms of the quality of their play, but they are almost certainly the greatest example of how he can, or indeed could, transform a group of men and mould them in his image.

While the final against Bayern provided the crowning moment, the game that best explains Inter’s success was their defensive masterclass in the semi-final second leg against Barcelona. “It is a style of blood, not skill,” Mourinho said that night. “When the moment of leaving everything on the pitch arrives, you don’t leave the skill. You leave the blood. We were a team of heroes. We sweated blood. It is a pity I could not play, because I have got the same blood.”

For this group of players, and this generation of men, words like these had the most powerful effect. Mourinho governed Inter through intensity but also through love for his troops and attention to their needs. “Every training session was a small war,” said Materazzi. When Christian Chivu fractured his skull halfway through that season, Mourinho called him every night. “His words gave me the desire to get back as quick as possible,” Chivu has said.

Mourinho fuelled his now famous ‘us against the world’ mentality throughout the season, not least when he made a controversial handcuffs gesture in response to refereeing decisions during a league match against Sampdoria. The message, he said through a spokesman at the time, was that “you can take me away, arrest me, but my team is strong and will win anyway”. The players drank it in.

Inter Milan's Diego Milito celebrates scoring against Bayern Munich during their Champions League final - reuters
Inter Milan's Diego Milito celebrates scoring against Bayern Munich during their Champions League final - reuters

It must have helped that so many were ripe for Mourinho’s messaging. Indeed, one of the more striking aspects of that treble-winning squad is how many of the players were in their first seasons at Inter. Samuel Eto’o, Thiago Motta, Sneijder, Milito and Lucio were all hand-picked by Mourinho in the summer of 2009, while Goran Pandev joined in the January window. These were not players signed because of their re-sale value, or as part of any long-term development plan — they were hired to win, and to win immediately.

The average age of Inter’s starting eleven for the Champions League final against Bayern was 29.6, comfortably the highest of any winning side in the last decade. Aside from the slightly younger Sneijder and the slightly older Zanetti, they were all born in the late 70s or early 80s. The same can be said of John Terry and Frank Lampard, Mourinho’s two most trusted lieutenants at Chelsea, and of his key players at Porto before them.

Mourinho has lifted two league titles since leaving Inter in the summer of 2010, having won six in the previous decade. Ten years on, it has become increasingly tempting to question whether he holds the same power over the players of today.

People change with the times and there is barely a footballer around who does not agree that modern players require different treatment to those of the recent past. Just ask Manchester United’s Luke Shaw, who endured a miserable friction with Mourinho that would surely seem inexplicable to his disciples in Italy.

Football Nerd REFERRAL (Article)
Football Nerd REFERRAL (Article)

The 10-year anniversary of Inter’s treble should serve as a reminder, though, of Mourinho’s strength as an emotional leader and his ability to massage the mind of the footballer. Even in his supposed decline, there are still moments when this shines through.

One of the most telling snippets of his first days at Tottenham Hotspur, for example, was the contrasting way in which he treated Son Heung-Min and Dele Alli. Son was greeted with a bear-hug and a friendly smile. Alli received a thump to the chest and a challenging jab of the finger. “I asked him if he was Dele or Dele’s brother,” Mourinho later explained. “He told me he was Dele. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Play like Dele.’”

Such methods worked wonders in the Inter days, and when he first managed Chelsea. Frank Lampard had emerged from the shower, completely naked, when Mourinho looked him in the eye and told him he was the best player in the world.

But how well does this approach work now? Will it work, in the long-term, on Alli and his Tottenham team-mates? We can safely assume that Mourinho himself thinks so, and the same can surely be said for Inter’s class of 2010, as loyal now as they were then.