‘‘Describe Jose Mourinho’s strengths and weaknesses as a coach, as well as, his possibilities for improvement. Last, compare him briefly with another coach, for instance, saying why he is good or bad (in your opinion) compared to X.’’

José Mourinho was born on January 26, 1963 in Setubal. He is a Portuguese soccer coach and a very good one. In 2010 he signed with Real Madrid a four year contract and before that he was coaching FC Porto, Chelsea and Internazionale. Mourinho is a very good coach, that one cannot take away from him. But what is interesting is to know what makes him a good coach. Can anyone else just take over Mourinho’s skills set and learn from him? Well Mourinho is a one of a kind type of guy. One peculiar thing about him is that his strengths are basically his weaknesses.
Mourinho has many weaknesses. He is a very childish, immature coach. He can be very selfish and is a bad loser. He was is known to be a very annoying coach and a lot of referees do not like him. He was even sent off the field once. This simply goes to show that he can be very annoying. I would like to inform you that I am a Barcelona fan. This means that I truly do not like real Madrid as a team. However, my hate is justified. Mourinho is part of the reason why I do not like Madrid. Madrid plays very bad. They always try to injure Leonel Messi, and they have a very dirty way of playing the game. They are very sore losers. However, all of these things seem to be shared characteristics with their coach. Mourinho is not a great public figure and somehow I cannot get myself to actually admire him, despite all of his accomplishments. I even once heard that Mourinho was warned by Real Madrid that he needs to get his act together and be more amiable or else they would kick him out. This rumor I heard right after the time he was sent off the field. Another scene to portray Mourinho’s childish character is when Madrid played against Barcelona for the Spanish super cup on 17-08-2011. There was a fight between the two teams and Mourinho being the coach of the team, comparable to the father of the team, goes and pokes someone during the fight. Mourinho is supposed to make sure that his players do not fight, instead of getting his players to stop fighting he actually joins the fight with a cowardly move. Things like these give people reasons not to like Mourinho as a coach. He really sets a bad example for his team, however this dirty way of playing is portrayed in Madrid’s play. All the players have a dirty way of playing and the dirtiest of them all is Pépé. I bet that he learned the most from Mourinho when it comes to unfriendly soccer.
However, I cannot deny the fact that Mourinho is a good coach to some extent. he does win games and he has proven himself multiple times as a coach. So what are his strengths? The fact that he knows a lot about the game is evident. He knows how to study his opponents and find their weaknesses and uses those weaknesses against them. However, I stated before that his strengths are his weaknesses and vice versa. The fact that he is a very stubborn coach is being reflected in his desire to move forward. He uses his flaws and gives them a positive twist. His evil mind is being used to as a strength, he has the desire to destroy all his opponents and that drives him to work so hard. His drive is not the winning, the winning is simply the aftermath of his drive. What really drives him is bitterness and grudges that he holds against other teams. The fact that he wins from those teams is simply the cherry on top. He can also be a fair coach to his players, he does not care how great a player is. Everyone is treated equally within the team. This allows other team players to always participate and it does not create a certain one man team. This is evident with Christiano Ronaldo. He is not treated differently from the other players. For Mourinho, if you play well then you get more play time. It is that simple for him and this allows his team to stand strong together. It omits the fact that you get clicks within the team and that some players feel as if they are better than the rest.
I still believe that Mourinho has some room for improvement. I do not believe that he needs to improve his coaching ability. He is a great coach, even though I do not like him a single bit I still have to admit that he is a great coach. I believe that he needs to improve his public relations ability. He needs to be more amiable to the public. This will help his image and the way people talk of him.
I chose to compare Guardiola to Mourinho. The reason for choosing Guardiola is that I am a Barcelona fan and that these two were rivals. Guardiola is also a very good coach, he took Barcelona to a whole new level. Barcelona was a great team and they were the reason why Madrid lost all those games. It is evident that Guardiola is a very good coach but so is Mourinho. I believe that Guardiola is a better coach than Mourinho. The reason for this is not because he was the Barcelona coach or that he beat Madrid so many times where Mourinho was the coach, it goes beyond that. Guardiola is a real coach, whereas Mourinho does not portray that coach status. As I mentioned before Mourinho can be very childish which makes him look very bad as a coach. I believe that they share a lot of characteristics which make them good coaches. They are both determined coaches, they are both driven to win, they both know a lot about the game and study their opponents carefully. The point where I believed Mourinho needed to improve, which was his ability to be amiable to the public. This ability Guardiola already has, he is a very contained coach, very mature indeed and this is evident in Barcelona’s game play. They play like real sports men, you do not see all the players trying to break Christiano’s ankles throughout the whole game. That is what makes Guardiola a better coach. The fact that he is a mature coach who brings his team together. He is the one that talks sense into the players rather than playing the childish games that Mourinho plays. Therefore Guardiola’s character makes him a better coach and that is what Mourinho needs to work on in order to become an excellent coach like Guardiola.