Mourinho had prepared what Ingla and Begiristain remember to be a brilliant power-point demonstration. His self-belief was clearly intact; he understood intimately the challenges ahead of Barça’s next coach, had deduced from a distance what was going wrong and had clear views on the best way out of the mess they were in. In normal circumstances the material, and the man, on show would have been so dazzling, so convincing that the argument would have become whether to give him the job there and then.
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Ingla confirms: “There was one moment when I said to him, ‘José, the problem we have with you is that you push the media too much. There is too much aggression. The coach is the image of the club.
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Ingla and Begiristain had an ace up their sleeve. The job was theirs to give and they felt no desperation about filling the post – largely because they already suspected that Guardiola was the man to rescue Barcelona.
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Begiristain, too, left Portugal racked with concerns.
The director of football was now convinced that Barça would win trophies if Mourinho was appointed three-and-a-half months down the line, in June 2008. Like Ingla, however, he’d found the Special One wanting.
The director of football was now convinced that Barça would win trophies if Mourinho was appointed three-and-a-half months down the line, in June 2008.
Begiristain couldn’t imagine Mourinho understanding that the club didn’t want or need outbursts in the media two or three times a week. What’s more, the Basque felt that the Barça he was trying to build valued respect for the opponent, honour in defeat, dignity and other fragile concepts more highly than Mourinho did at that time, or perhaps ever would. Begiristain, on the flight back to El Prat airport, knew that they were about to play a percentage game.
He was 100% sure, and remains so to this day, that Barça would have trained well, played decent, if pragmatic, football and won trophies.
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Ferran Soriano [the Barcelona General Manager] describes the mood of the expeditionary force when Ingla and Begiristain returned from Portugal. “Txiki and Marc thought that Mourinho was very well prepared,” he recalls. “He had a PowerPoint display on how he would manage everything. They spent three hours with him and both came away thinking Mourinho was not our guy. Marc said that Mourinho spoke 90% of the time and didn’t listen. He said: ‘I just don’t like him.’
“Txiki was a bit more rational. He said: ‘Mourinho would do well, but the number of fires he would cause internally, and with the media, are not worth it.’"
