Mourinho the man for all reasons

Let no one ever accuse Jose Mourinho of being ill prepared. In the winter sunshine of Setubal, nearly 1,000 miles south of London, the people's choice to manage England has spent the past fortnight fine-tuning a strategy document designed to persuade the Football Association he could not just revive the national team, but help them win the World Cup.

His Chelsea project terminated, Mourinho was forced to seek his next 'big job'. If lucrative offers from Tottenham, Lyon and Valencia were subsequently rejected with an eye on grander posts, the idea of resurrecting England remained among them.

In the week of his departure from Stamford Bridge he allowed his interest in any vacancy to be made public in these pages. When Steve McClaren's reign of image and indecision came to its Croatian conclusion two months later, Mourinho began preparing a plan in case the FA came calling. As he worked on it, Mourinho's motivation developed beyond his young family's desire to return to London and his passion for the English game. Managing England, he realised, offered both the opportunity of unique achievement and a new challenge as a coach.

If he is appointed, Mourinho will seek to alter almost every aspect of the England team. His concept is for a true Club England, the creation of a national side with the spirit, structures and 'personality' of a club side. Develop these attributes, he reasons, and English players will have the strength to resist the external pressures of an impatient public and the base from which to express their talent effectively.

'England are like Chelsea when Mourinho arrived,' a senior England international said recently. 'We've got the players and the talent, what we need is to be given self-belief. It's that extra 10 per cent that puts winning teams on the park. With Mourinho as manager we would have proper organisation, proper drilling about opponents and the mental strength to win. The biggest difference is that we would go out believing we're going to win, not hoping we will.'

When Mourinho arrived at Chelsea in the summer of 2004, he consciously set out to reinvent the team's identity. He visited the club's England internationals and told them they were 'the heart' of his team, told Lampard that he was 'the best player in the world', made John Terry captain, regularly referring to him as 'the best defender in the world', and delivered perhaps the most memorable debut press conference in English football history. In a precisely planned performance designed to impress his confidence upon his team, opponents and media, Mourinho anointed himself as a 'special one' and the label stuck.

Lampard recalls the effect on other England internationals in his biography: '"See your new gaffer on the telly?" I was asked a few times by some of the players, "Who the fuck does he think he is?"' Mourinho's carefully chosen words had changed the perception of Chelsea as a squad of nearly men began evolving into a team of winners.

His England should expect the same - a barnstorming opening address designed to unify the nation behind the team and establish their identity. A press that like to tell England managers exactly where they are going wrong, which players to select and what systems to employ will be invited on board. Journalists who persist in second-guessing the coach will be ignored with squads never selected according to column inches and studio debate. As Andriy Shevchenko can testify, Mourinho has the strength of character to resist external pressures.

In common with Chelsea and Porto, tactical discipline will be central to the project. No one will be guaranteed a place in the England team and grand names who refuse to toe the tactical line can expect swift omission.

The squad that failed to qualify for next summer's Euro 2008 finals will receive an immediate transfusion of talent from the under-21s with Gabriel Agbonlahor, James Milner, Steven Taylor, Ashley Young and Mark Noble thought to be prominent in Mourinho's thinking. Next year's friendly internationals would be carefully employed to implement Mourinho's strategy and thoroughly prepare the team for the World Cup qualification campaign.

McClaren's decision to make Terry captain may well be reconsidered, which could be helpful given the centre-back's fitness problems and unfortunate ability to capture the wrong kind of headlines. Lampard - who Mourinho has promised will be central to his plans - and Steven Gerrard would be captaincy candidates, and the coach is certain both midfielders can be productively paired.

As at Chelsea, the principle is to provide a framework of play that best utilises the abilities of each player. 'It would be the best thing in the world for Gerrard because he would have to play with discipline or not play at all,' says one Chelsea player. 'Mourinho would help him finally realise his potential as an international.'

Central to Mourinho's concept is the application of the revolutionary tactical training and preparation methods that brought him 10 major trophies in five seasons at Porto and Chelsea. His principal assistant, Rui Faria, has sketched out a training regime adapted to the limited access times of international football. A highly regarded sports-science graduate, Faria combines fitness drills with technical exercises, all of which involve ball work. His thinking is that national-team training should be directed towards upcoming matches.

Another defining feature of the Mourinho method is an emphasis on thorough scouting of opponents. At Chelsea, there were at least three team meetings before every match. Limited to 30 minutes duration to avoid losing the players' attention, Mourinho would present video analyses of opposition strengths and weaknesses to the defensive and offensive halves of his team the evening before kick off. The next morning there would be another meeting focusing on set pieces, both attacking and defensive.

Supplementing these sessions were succinct printed dossiers of opponents' strategies and set pieces, based on at least three scouting missions by Andre Villas Boas and fellow tactical scouts. Individually tailored DVDs of direct opponents would also be distributed. Before a Manchester United game, for example, full-backs would received footage of Cristiano Ronaldo, detailing his favoured moves, his preferred foot, where he tends to cut inside or out. With fewer matches and less familiar opponents but more time to scout, all of these techniques could be used to hand England a competitive advantage.

Mourinho intends to extend the Club England concept even further, establishing himself as a national team manager 'like no other'. He can be expected to work as he did as a club coach, which would probably form a six-day week, basing himself at the FA's headquarters at Soho Square when not engaged in monitoring the players or their opponents in club games.

With the same reasoning he employed in making Steve Clarke his assistant manager at Chelsea, the Portuguese would make the appointment of an experienced former England international to work alongside him a priority. Like Clarke, a veteran of 421 Chelsea matches, the English assistant would be critical to developing the team's identity.

Instead of borrowing medical staff from Premier League clubs, Mourinho would expand the FA's own in-house medical department, ensuring there was an independent team of specialised professionals. Ideally, he would also like the FA to provide a dedicated facility. Completing the national training centre at Burton upon Trent would further reinforce that national identity.

Unique in its ambition and scope, a plan as comprehensive as Mourinho's will not come cheap. FA Board members have said that for this appointment money is no object - the question that faces them is whether they can afford to go with any other.