Mourinho, Hodgson, No Substitutions

by Nick Lichtenberg

Four clubs representing four countries. Two cup competitions. Two winning managers. Two pivotal come-from-behind home victories: 3-1 at Milan’s San Siro and 2-1 at London’s Craven Cottage. The facts end there, but the feelings have ranged far and wide since.

I am talking, of course, about Roy Hodgson and Jose Mourinho. While there has been universal appreciation for the former (EPL Talk said he “could almost have walked out of a Dickens novel”), the latter has garnered a surprisingly high amount of disdain, from my co-blogger Dominic Vieira to the Observer’s Paul Hayward, who said that Inter’s victory over Barcelona “belonged in history’s bin.”

Observers of the European club game have effectively rendered two vastly different verdicts on these managers, but to this American’s eyes, their achievements look remarkably similar. How could that be?

“Football, bloody hell,” Alex Ferguson once said, because he knew of no better way to describe the footballing spectacle he’d just seen. More than 10 years later, football has every bit as great a capacity to create an intangible, confounding feeling in observers, who can conclude Jose Mourinho is assassinating their sport and Roy Hodgson is uplifting it, even after the latter presided over a dreadful 0-0 draw. Something greater has to be at work, something fundamental. And I think it’s substitution.