Football news - The job he long coveted now registers as Jose Mourinho’s grandest failure

As Manchester United hung on for a 4-3 FA Youth Cup defeat of Chelsea on Monday night, José Mourinho was nowhere to be seen at Leigh Sports Village. He had not bothered to travel the 12 miles from his suite in Salford’s Lowry Hotel.

It was left to assistant Michael Carrick to congratulate the club’s kids on ending Chelsea’s dominance of a trophy so important to Manchester United’s history. Whatever Mourinho’s reasons for staying away, it is a history he has rarely shown much interest in, mostly because it did not feature him. And, having been given word of his sacking early the next morning, he will play no further part in the story.

On Sunday, in the aftermath of losing 3-1 at Anfield, he chose to compare Liverpool’s team to the “mad dogs” he had at FC Porto, talked of the Real Madrid team that “killed everybody in defensive transition” and wistfully recalled the Inter “low block” that did not concede a goal for five hours of football.

When a manager is reaching for his greatest hits like that, it is a sign he has run out of new material. Wherever Mourinho may pitch up next, the Manchester United memories will not be so warmly recalled. There are no tactical triumphs to regale when Marouane Fellaini has been your main attack weapon. When Mourinho said that one of his greatest achievements was finishing second behind Manchester City last season, he was fooling nobody, least of himself, a winner of the Champions League with Porto and Inter.

For much of the last 30 months, United have been stodgy, shapeless. In that first season when the EFL Cup and Europa League were collected, the football was more entertaining than that played under predecessor Louis van Gaal, but those are low standards on which a United manager should be judged.

The job he had long coveted, and wanted to take straight after Sir Alex Ferguson’s May 2013 retirement, now registers as the grandest failure of Mourinho’s career. It says much for him that United is the first club since Uniao de Leiria with whom he has not won a league title but he is now a manager in serious decline. History has repeated itself such that he cannot now be regarded as anything but a short-term manager, expensive at that and both in financial and moral terms.

Tuesday’s curt meeting with United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward was three years and a day since his Chelsea sacking after a team of defending champions had entered a terminal tailspin. Unlike Chelsea, United are not in relegation trouble but 19 points off leaders Liverpool and 11 away from Champions League qualification.

And the club must repair the collateral wreckage that Mourinho always leaves behind him. Paul Pogba’s social media faux-pas should not deflect from the fact that a world-class talent has stalled. The triggering of contract extensions rather than the renegotiating of new deals for David de Gea and Anthony Martial suggests a club struggling to hang on to its finest players.

Mourinho is the manager who spent almost £400m on 11 players and ended up trusting only one of them in Nemanja Matic. Two players signed in the last year, Fred and Alexis Sanchez, are in danger of being the most expensive failures in the club’s history, both shrunken to the fringes.

The likes of Martial, Luke Shaw and Henrikh Mkhitaryan received treatment that bordered on persecution, while Marcus Rashford has often played like someone whose talents have been neglected.

The former master motivator had become a manager few players appeared willing to run an extra yard for. And while United in the post-Ferguson era has been dysfunctional and directionless, Mourinho’s attempts to place himself as someone on disgruntled fans’ sides, a warrior of the light, defied credibility. As did his repeated shrugging at the latest embarrassment, washing his hands of players unable to follow his instructions. The first rule of Jose Mourinho is that it is never his fault, except when it suits him.

Woodward’s appointment of him was naive, a confidence trick fallen for. Somehow, a manager who had so dramatically imploded at Chelsea, windmilling in all directions and involved himself in the regrettable Eva Carneiro affair, was going to be the answer to United’s problems when those problems ran so deep.

Ferguson’s qualities as a kingmaker were mortally wounded by the selection of David Moyes as his successor but a long-held reluctance to have Mourinho at his club have been borne out. Mourinho’s allies point to his first Chelsea team as proof he is capable of allowing his team to play expansive football, but that is a judgement call made on evidence from ancient history. And was still nothing like the attacking football demanded at United.

The Premier League is now dominated by technocrats like Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, Maurizio Sarri and Mauricio Pochettino; each of them marries tactical acumen with motivational qualities. And that was once Mourinho, but time had curdled him to make him wholly unsuitable to be manager of Manchester United.