Rich Chelsea poorer for giving 'special one' the red card
London
Oh dear. Just when you thought all the barren years were behind you. Those years of being a 'grindingly unsuccessful' club, more famous for what happened off the field than on it, long gone. The dream of winning soccer competitions now a firm reality. Then what happens? The 'special one' who fashioned all the success leaves after rows with the owner.
Jose Mourinho's dramatic late-night exit as manager of Chelsea football club last week bore all the trappings of a British prime minister being deposed in a sinister night of the long knives.
News of his exit knocked the seemingly endless tragic soap that surrounds poor Madeleine McCann's parents off the front pages. Talk around the pub and dinner party table revolved not around the first run on a British bank since the 19th century but the great Portuguese's exit. Forget Northern Rock, read west London shock.
Everyone? Yes, pretty much. Even women. Mourinho transcended gender just like he transcended football rivalries. After all, not for nothing was Mourinho being lined up as ambassador for the London Olympics.
Fans of Arsenal or Tottenham in north London, or west London neighbours Fulham may have taken great delight in mocking Chelsea supporters' grief, but the London radio phone-ins were full of rivals saying football would be worse off without him.
He wasn't just a football manager - he was a successful, horrendously arrogant, football manager.
He was also immensely well-dressed, with smouldering good looks. The London Evening Standard held him up as a model for tawdrily attired London males. He was dubbed the Prince of Cashmere for his coats, the Devil in Prada for his suits. Men stopped talking in pubs to hear what Mourinho would say on television. Women would stop and marvel at his clothes.
Mourinho was an admirable villain. The top villain at a club universally loathed in English football grounds. Chelsea is the team that every other rival loves to hate.
Chelsea is a rich district, it's home borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the wealthiest in London, if not Britain. It was fashionable, too, for a time. The King's Road boutiques and clubs were world-famous in the 1960s and 70s.
Other fans loathed the business side of Chelsea. As a club it seemed rich, arrogant, its boardroom as underhand in its dealings as its players were overpaid and underplayed. The fans, too, were despised, with a notoriously right-wing, racist and violent following.
Such money and roguishness never bought success until the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought the club and took spending to a new height. He sacked the amiable Claudio Ranieri as manager, and brought in Mourinho. The success he achieved made Chelsea even more disliked. Chelsea hadn't earned success, they had bought it.
So famous was Mourinho he became the stunningly arrogant character in a Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield sketch called Jose Arrogantio. There was also a rich Russian chairman sketch, caricatured walking into shops and buying everything, even a child's sweets. When the child cried, he'd collect her tears and buy them, too.
Chelsea fans didn't care. Success was sweet. No more, perhaps. Now the 'special one', as both Mourinho and Arrogantio called themselves, has gone. And the smiles are back in north London.
