Jose Mourinho dusts off old charm in bid to win over hearts and minds at Tottenham

This feels like a slightly different Mourinho to previous years and his admiration for what Spurs are building is genuine, but only time will tell if he can bring results

As the Tottenham Hotspur players gathered for their first meeting with Jose Mourinho, the vibe was very much that they were welcome to change, but were unsure of what kind of welcome he was going to give them. They’d heard an awful lot from friends at other clubs. They were still “intrigued”. They were soon enthused, and enraptured.

Mourinho boldly told them that, if they fully bought in to his approach, he would make them champions. Some old tricks, yes, but for a captive new audience. It was a line Mourinho repeated in his very first press conference as Spurs head coach, if obviously with more nuance.

“We cannot win the Premier League this season,” the Portuguese began. “We can – I’m not saying we will do – win it next season.” It was music to many ears at Spurs – not least chairman Daniel Levy – given that they’re currently on the longest run without any trophy at all since 1951.

That is also the real relevance of this rallying call, beyond continuing Mauricio Pochettino’s work of recalibrating the mentality and expectation of a club where – as the Portuguese said – “they’re even waiting for the bad days”. Before Mourinho gets to the crucial part of trying to prove he is still a good enough coach to win the major trophies, he must actually win a lot of people around.

There is first of all that squad of players, who had heard a lot about him, but were still intrigued to find out for themselves. There is then a somewhat jaded football public. After 16 years of the same old pantomime replaying itself to increasing tedium, interest has moved on to newer stories, and the wider discussion has been Mourinho is past it. One high-profile figure from a rival club remarked that the Portuguese’s media act is now “boring”. That’s a view that was already tested on this headline return on Thursday afternoon.

Most of all, though, there is the hugely sceptical Tottenham fanbase. While there has been a small minority at matches for a few months angrily demanding “Levy” get “f***ing Jose in”, the majority are still mourning the departure of the much-loved Pochettino, and ultimately just associate Mourinho with Chelsea.

This, however, is exactly where the Portuguese excels. “It won’t be long until he has a lot of those fans eating out of his hand,” one Manchester United source said. It certainly feels one part of the job that still comes easy to him. That was illustrated by how he felt obliged to start his press conference with a tribute to Pochettino. He’s not just your man, the message was. He’s our man.

“I have to share with you what we already shared indoors, which is this club will always be his home,” Mourinho began. “The door is always open for him. From my experience, tomorrow is another day and he will find happiness again.” What a way to immediately mellow the anger of the many still wishing it was Pochettino sitting there rather than him.

There was then how he dealt with his actual identity in the minds of many Spurs fans, as “Mr Chelsea”. It was put to Mourinho that he once said he would never come to Tottenham, because he loved the supporters at the other end of London too much. “That was before I was sacked,” he joked, with some seriousness. “That’s modern football.”

This is the present Mourinho, who instead insisted they just have to see him as “Mr Club” – “which means that every club I go to… I did it with this passion”.

There was then his articulation of what the modern Spurs is. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Portuguese made those comments about Chelsea fans in 2013, when asked about rebuffing Tottenham in 2007. Levy has long wanted Mourinho, but it’s fair to say Mourinho hasn’t needed to look at Spurs. He’s always respected them as a club, but never quite had that reverence for their name. This is after all a man who once mocked Saturday’s rival, Manuel Pellegrini, for having to take a job like Malaga after leaving Real Madrid.

Mourinho is excited by his new challenge at Spurs (Getty)

Mourinho now finds himself in a similar situation, but he didn’t find the same Tottenham. His praise for the club’s entire project, and ambition, was wholly sincere.

“Every minute I spend in the club I realise that my decision was correct. I am really enjoying a big football club with a big structure and a great organisation. It is not about the wonderful structure we have, it is also about the dynamic of the structure. Fantastic.”

Mourinho is said to be genuinely awestruck by the grandeur of the stadium, the quality of the facilities. He has privately remarked that this is precisely what a big club “feels like”. And he’d know. He’s only known the grandest clubs since 2004. And yet there was still a curious feeling from his press conference that, as big as Spurs are becoming, Mourinho remains bigger.

Levy became increasingly frustrated when Pochettino would actively play up to speculation about his future and give the impression Spurs were just a stepping stone, so one of his requirements for a replacement was a manager who needed the club as much they needed him. That had seemed the case with Mourinho, but was fairly disproved by his first public appearance.

It was the less prominent details that actually gave it away, such as the fact there were more media present for this press conference than there were for the one before the Champions League final. Spurs meanwhile understandably persisted with their usual policy of only broadcasting the manager’s press conference after it had finished, but this was perhaps to miss a trick, since it was one of the global media events of the day. A live stream on one of their social media channels would have had huge interest. This is the attraction of a box-office star as a manager, and it’s easy to forget that this is pretty much the first one that Spurs have ever appointed. Pochettino used the job to make himself a star. Mourinho, for all the recent criticism, arrives as a star.

And it’s all the more relevant given this controversial Amazon documentary. The interest in that will now rocket. They have the perfect storyline, the perfect leading man. Pochettino might have had reservations about the presence of cameras, but it is a situation Mourinho is able to make out he is entirely comfortably with. When asked about it, he jokingly put a finger to his lips to gesture to be quiet, while pointing to the mic in his pocket.

Thursday was genuinely Mourinho on form, displaying full charisma, in a way we haven’t seen for a while. Certainly not at Old Trafford. And that has a greater importance than superficial charm. Mourinho made sure to enthuse about how much he loved “the fans at Old Trafford”, “the people that worked in the club” but still alluded to problems. “Man U occupied my heart – even with things I didn’t enjoy too much.”

In praising how supreme the set-up is at Spurs, then, there was a drive-by and heavy implication. “I am really more focused on my job, on my coaching, on my players and my team and I am not worried at all with everything that surrounds me”. Such worries contributed to a mood that was often morose at Old Trafford, but then he never really seemed all that happy in the first place.

Mourinho was pleasant when he first took that job, of course, but no one was talking about him in the effusive way the Spurs staff are now. The feeling remains that he didn’t have enough of a break back then in 2016, that he was too insistent on quickly righting all the criticisms from his last spell at Chelseal to prove he was still at his peak. Some around Old Trafford say he then quickly realised that it was going to be almost impossible to beat Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, and that his surly demeanour constantly radiated this.

“This is the era of the personality manager and he is one,” one source says. “But when he turns grumpy, it has more of an effect than he imagines.”

It was often hard to imagine him as anything but grumpy at Old Trafford. United was the job he always wanted, but it ended up coming at the wrong time, and never looked right. Spurs is the job he’s never really considered, but so much of it might be absolutely right.

Those close to Mourinho say he is genuinely enthused and energised by this. That’s how he made the players feel on that first meeting, having since further impressed them with his thoroughness. That’s how he’s making the staff feel. That’s what his demeanour is radiating.

“It is not Mourinho vision or Mourinho objectives,” he said. It is a club vision. A club objective. It is about us.

“I read one quote from Kobe Bryant, and if you have to speak about some examples of professionalism and serial winners, Kobe is a great example in his sport, in the world of sport. Where he says: ‘People say that I’m difficult but I’m only difficult for the ones that don’t share my principles.’ So all the colleagues that share his principles, they just love him. The ones that don’t like him are the ones that don’t share the principles. And with me it’s basically the same.”

But it doesn’t fully seem the same Mourinho of the last few years. Many say he always “comes as your friend at first” and initially lays on the charm, but this feels like a relationship he is now fully invested in. He’s ready for it. He’s already won many people at the club over. He’s already started on the fans, but nothing wins them over like winning games.

That, however, is what remains the real test. The hope for Mourinho is that this happier mood feeds into it.