Apologies to new parents, in particular. You may have come to the football pages in search of momentary relief from daily chores but I have been tasked with writing about José Mourinho’s premature handshakes. So no escape here from the baby shit. That’s Mourinho for you. One of the most sophisticated football minds of our times has a staggering capacity to turn things juvenile. In his hands, a simple gesture of sportsmanship can easily become a show of disdain. At times it seems part of a machiavellian master plan, other times a symptom of a strange mania. Mourinho: part genius, part jerk. Nothing new there.
It’ll be interesting, sort of, to see what Mourinho does if Chelsea have an unassailable lead at Selhurst Park on Saturday with just a few minutes left. He suggested on Friday that he would have no qualms about offering his counterpart his hand before full-time and would not understand why Neil Warnock or anyone else would be offended by this. The Portuguese has previously indicated that he sometimes leaves the touchline early, when victory seems certain, so that he can telephone his wife and share the good news. It is, he claims, unfortunate if such an action is misinterpreted, just as it was a pity he wound up being accused of triumphalist provocation by celebrating a last-minute winning goal for Chelsea against Manchester City last year right in front of the opposing dugout, behind which his son was seated.
Whatever. Mourinho is smart to know that a rival manager would feel patronised by him behaving as if the match is over before it actually is. And of course he gets why Roy Keane branded him a “disgrace” for pulling that stunt at Aston Villa in September, when Keane and Paul Lambert turned their noses up at the tendered hand. So why does Mourinho do it? What does he gain from it? In some cases – notably when he referred to Manuel Pellegrini as “Mr Pellegrino”, or in his many barbs at Arsène Wenger – he conceivably gets a sporting edge from irritating a major rival who would like to appear unflappable. But why bother antagonising the managers of a club such as Aston Villa, who cannot realistically challenge Chelsea for titles?
Let us, for larks, enter the domain of amateur psychology. Maybe victory is not enough for Mourinho. Maybe he feels a need to truly own the vanquished, to humiliate them in a way that means they keep thinking about him long after their encounter has ended. That would be a compulsion in common with some serial killers so let us, for heaven’s sake, exit the domain of amateur psychology.
Perhaps there is nothing sinister or silly behind Mourinho’s handshake behaviour. Or perhaps at Villa Park he remembered that, while Villa are not Premier League title contenders, their win at Villa Park did dent Chelsea’s chances of being champions last season so the handshake thing was a little childish payback. Funnily enough, Palace beat Chelsea at Selhurst Park in their very next away game after that defeat last season. So, as previously mentioned, it will be interesting to see what Mourinho does if Chelsea are in a comfortable lead before the end at Selhurst Park.
Sort of.
