Jose Mourinho - The Master Tactician

He is one of the best managers in the world and without a shadow of a doubt he is the best tactician in the world. Today we’ll look at his early years where he used to play with a more adventurous midfield diamond.

Jose Mourinho took the world by storm as he tweaked a five man midfield into a diamond where he played with a midfield runner along with a box-to-box combative midfielder this duo sat ahead of a deep midfielder who was used brilliantly by him. Along with this, the two wide men used to be industrious and pacey to run at the opposition. The role of wide men is what made this system more flexible. As they can play as traditional wingers or as inverted ones, the latter ones are preferred by Jose.

The triangle in midfield in those days consisted of Makelele, Lampard and Thiago/Essien. This triangle simply bulldozed English teams of those years as they used to play a more traditional 4-4-2. As pointed out aptly by master,

‘Look, if I have a triangle in midfield – Claude Makelele behind and two others just in front – I will always have an advantage against a pure 4-4-2 where the central midfielders are side by side. That’s because I will always have an extra man. It starts with Makelele, who is between the lines. If nobody comes to him he can see the whole pitch and has time. If he gets closed down it means one of the two other central midfielders is open. If they are closed down and the other team’s wingers come inside to help, it means there is space now for us on the flank, either for our own wingers or for our full-backs. There is nothing a pure 4-4-2 can do to stop things’.

This sums his philosophy in a nutshell. So now we know why Chelsea bulldozed to back-to-back titles.