It is not until we are 80 minutes into an entertaining, absorbing but inexorably long press conference that Jose Mourinho’s motivations for joining Fenerbahce start to become clear.
Obviously some of those reasons go unsaid, like money, but you imagine if hard cash was the main factor he would be in Saudi Arabia or MLS.
There is the undeniable fact that the things that made Mourinho a truly great manager 10-15 years ago are less applicable in 2024, i.e. his tactical approach and his way of handling man-management and the media. He is a one-man circus and some clubs will not touch him anymore.
The 61-year-old is still unquestionably a massive draw, though, as the stunning scenes at Fenerbahce’s stadium on Sunday night proved.
So why Fenerbahce in particular? “That culture (of Fenerbahce) makes it fun,” he said. “It’s for the president, the directors, the board to be stable and to be balanced, but not the fans. They have to be crazy.
“They have to be demanding, to put pressure on us. That passion is part of my motivation.”
You do feel that to be true. Mourinho talks of wanting to run to the fans when celebrating last-minute winners, of wearing the Fenerbahce shirt as his skin, of the club already being his family.
Koc and Mourinho speak in front of a Mourinho backdrop (Photo: YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images)
After living in a hotel for two and a half years at Manchester United, then in London (which he still calls home) in a pandemic, Mourinho has chosen the bright lights and fun times of Rome and now Istanbul as his places of residence.
Istanbul is similar to the Italian capital in that its football fans are, in the nicest possible way, absolutely out of their trees. It is also a beautiful, historic city rich in culture, the weather is beautiful and no one is bald. What a place.
Their volcanic passion, when times are good, will inspire Mourinho and vice versa.
We had a flavour of that on Sunday at his unveiling when he took 30,000 rabid people and nonchalantly placed them in the palms of his hands. He shushed them, he led them in song, he roused them. They gave up their Sunday evenings to watch him wave a bit, sign a piece of paper and speak 134 words.
If that is the level, what else will they do for him? Follow him into battle? Storm the presidential palace?
And what will he do for them? If Graeme Souness planted a Galatasaray flag in Fenerbahce’s centre circle, what is Mourinho capable of? Will he flash his bare backside at Galatasaray’s ultras? The possibilities for carnage feel limitless.
In football terms, for all Mourinho’s talk on Monday of wanting to improve the Turkish league and raise its profile, Fenerbahce are a step down. They have never reached a European final and Turkish football is ninth in the UEFA coefficient list, sandwiched between Belgium and the Czech Republic (can recommend Bruges and Prague, Jose).
Does it even matter? He has got enough money to live in space, so who are we to judge where he spends the next part of his life?
It is thought that, for all the hefty weight Mourinho’s name still carries and his initial success in his last job at Roma, winning the Europa Conference League and reaching the Europa League final, the phone has not been red hot with job offers.
Mourinho with the Conference League trophy in 2022 (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Mourinho has stated publicly that he regrets not taking the Portugal job when Fernando Santos left after the 2022 World Cup, but in terms of top-tier European clubs — and there are many who have needed or do need a new manager this summer like Bayern Munich and Chelsea — he has not been seriously courted, despite what is believed to be hopeful suggestions to the contrary from his agent Jorge Mendes.
The Athletic understands that Fenerbahce first reached out to Mourinho in March and, while he expressed an interest, it was not until recent weeks that he started to take the prospect seriously.
From Mourinho’s point of view and depending on where he sees the autumn of his managerial career heading, there is the opportunity to dip down to Turkey for a year or two, win the league, maybe have a fun run in Europe and then get out, reputation slightly enhanced after things ended so badly in Rome.
Fenerbahce have not won the league for 10 years — their longest barren run in the history of the Super Lig — but finished second with an improbable total of 99 points last season. And champions Galatasaray have an ageing team A number of their key players from last season are the wrong side of 30, like goalkeeper Fernando Muslera (aged 38) or the league’s top scorer Mauro Icardi (31), while Dries Mertens may have registered a league-high 19 assists last season but he is 37. They will need a reset soon.
“It’s a very clever choice for him,” a source close to Mourinho, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, told The Athletic. “In a place like this he can be loved as he wants.”
Mourinho, then, made a play for Fenerbahce, but they enticed him too.
Which party did that was the primary question on the lips of many of the 120 journalists at his press conference, with the opening exchanges dominated by the political wranglings of an upcoming presidential election.
In summary, former president Aziz Yildirim (from 1998 to 2018) is bidding to be re-elected this month. He proposed some time ago that if he won the election, he would hire Mourinho. Incumbent Ali Koc, though, got there first, finalising the deal before the election, and Mourinho gushed over the president during the press conference.
30,0000 fans greeted Mourinho’s arrival (Huseyin Yavuz/ dia images via Getty Imagez)
Mourinho denied a suggestion that he checked with Yildirim before taking the job — “nobody tells me what to do or gives me permission”. He stated, importantly, that he will work under whoever is elected, and he insisted the first presidential candidate to contact him was Koc. That was after a call from sporting director Mario Branco who, like Roma’s former sporting director Tiago Pinto, is Portuguese.
It was a textbook Mourinho press conference, complete with jokes, barbs and a few early excuses for the new season.
Jokes — he drew laughs, each time with a trademark knowing smirk, for moaning about the length of the questions being asked. “I can’t help but notice how long they are…shorter questions mean we have more questions and answers”, how long the press conference was “after 20 years of football this is the longest press conference of my life” and of the length of the document Branco prepared on the club’s vision “it was so big it had to be air-dropped in”. To be honest, what is coming across is that Mourinho wants more free time.
Anyway, there were barbs at Galatasarary by virtue of the fact he did not once mention their name, even when talking about last season’s champions, while he had a pop at former clubs Roma and possibly Tottenham Hotspur too, with a speech about how clubs who only aim for fifth have no ambition, but Fenerbahce represent ambition because they have to win every game to win the title. Yep, not sure about that one.
It is worth repeating in full. “What is ambition? My house is in London. To have a London club, to fight to be sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, make a miracle and qualify for the Europa League? Is that ambition?
“I love Italy. To have a team where you have to make a miracle to win a European competition and you stay fifth, sixth, seventh, is that ambition?
“To be in Portugal, to be at home, visit my mum every day, is that ambition?
“Ambition is to play to win, to feel the pressure you have to win every match to be champion. This is the reality of Fenerbahce.
“It means I’m not in my comfort zone. The project had an impact on me…now it’s my time to have an impact on the project.”
Vintage Jose.
The early excuses were centred around not one, not two but three unprompted mentions about how qualifying for the Champions League this summer will be difficult because he has eight players at the Euros and the first qualifier is next month.
“I’m going to say something maybe I shouldn’t say…but I wish our players go out early in the Euros and they come home to rest and to train,” he added.
Not as many laughs in the room for that one, probably because four of the eight play for Turkey.
He even dropped in a preemptive, Inception-style line about how the league’s smaller teams do not take enough points off Galatasaray and Fenerbahce. This was a double-edged pre-empt as to why he may not reach Fenerbahce’s record of 99 points and 99 goals from last season.
“I don’t think (99 points and 103 for Galatasaray) is good, that gap (to third) is not good. Hopefully next season we have a better league with more balance,” he said.
“I want the league to be stronger — if I could have less than 99 points and win the title, that’s what I want.”
A manager saying he wants to win the league with fewer points, we have heard it all now.
There was fawning, too. One reporter said it was an honour for her to ask a question of Mourinho having followed his career since childhood.
But hey, no wonder they are giddy; this is one of the biggest things to happen to Fenerbahce or Turkish football for many years.
We can be snide about Mourinho’s career trajectory and lament how Europe’s once-premier coach is trying to relive his former glories on a smaller stage.
Or we can wish good luck to a man who has not taken the Saudi money, who has not retired to a super yacht in the Mediterranean and who is addicted not just to winning, but to the same raw football-loving/hating emotions that burn within football fans the world over. We can all relate to that.
“I don’t like sabbatical years or holidays,” Mourinho said. “I hope we score goals in the last minute and I run to the crowd, many times. I can still run, eh?”
A corner of Istanbul just became essential viewing.
(Photo: Oguz Yeter/Anadolu via Getty Images)
