When it was all said and done, Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United were not even close to getting their hands on Premier League silverware back in the 2017/18 season.
In spite of it being the Portuguese manager’s best league campaign in charge of the Red Devils (finished 2nd with 81pts), United trailed the champions Manchester City by 19 points.
And though he came runner-up to his long time foe Pep Guardiola that time, Mourinho considered that season to be one of his most challenging — and as a result — most satisfying results.
Mourinho’s spell at United was largely considered a failure purely because he didn’t win the league. The promised success that he did bring has been massively overlooked.
But even with the media generated turmoil around the ‘Special One’s’ name, former assistant Ricardo Formosinho recently explained that people in the football world still put Jose on a pedestal in the managerial hierarchy today.
“Yes, because he is unique,” Formosinho told Portuguese Record — as reported by SportWitness — when asked if Mourinho is still looked at differently by other managers. “That lesser success at Manchester United, for example, is very relative, as is easily proven by facts.” Formosinho continued.
“We weren’t champions, it’s true, but we won the Europa League, the League Cup, the Community Shield, and, in a fight with a Manchester City, who did not fulfill, as proved later, the financial fair play, we were runners-up — at a time when, having sporting truth, we would have been champions.”
United were comfortably the “best of the rest” that season over the course of the campaign. The noisy neighbors were famously involved in a financial fair play case that could have left them with no Premier League trophy and banned from future Champions League involvement. So, Formosinho certainly makes a good point when putting Mourinho’s achievements that year into context.
As we know, the result of the case swung in City’s favor, meaning United had to settle for being runners-up, even though Guardiola’s side were proved to be guilty of their accusations.
So, even though it was not a fair fight in the end, Mourinho still came out of it looking quite strong. And that’s one of the big reasons as to why, in spite of the recently popular opinions, Formosinho still believes that his former boss is the very best there is.
“People may ask why he’s the best. I answer that because he thinks faster and comes up with solutions faster,” Formosinho said. “When talking about the growth of others at the tactical level, he goes far ahead strategically. He’s different for the better. I’d say even much better.”
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