Mourinho and His Treble Winning Inter Campaign
During the 2009–10 season, Jose Mourinho took his Inter Milan team on a wonderful adventure and led them to an unprecedented continental treble. No other Italian club has ever won Serie A, Coppa Italia and the UEFA Champions League in one season, and there are only seven European clubs in total who have done it ever. Since completing the treble, Inter has not won a Serie A title as we try to trace the tactics that were followed by The Special One.
Mourinho has always been infamously categorized as a defensive-minded manager who follows a very conservative approach. However, his Inter side scored a total of 75 goals in the league while also conceding the fewest. The second-best team on the scoring charts was Roma who scored seven goals less than the table-toppers Inter Milan. So, rather than categorizing or demonizing him as a defensive-minded manager, Mourinho can be termed as someone who has superb defensive organization and ensures that his teams play wholly on the counter.
During the course of the season, Mourinho majorly deployed a 4–3–1–2 or a 4–2–3–1 formation with Lucio and Walter Samuel marshaling the troops from behind with Julio Cesar acting as a sweeper-keeper and reading the game adeptly. Both the central defenders sat back and depended upon the strength and mobility of the midfield to cover most of the ground. They also had an able leader in Javier Zanetti who played mostly at the left-back position with sometimes moving upwards to play as a central midfielder. This was majorly done when he needed to counter specific threats or bring in distinct abilities into the game. The right-back position belonged to Maicon who was more of an attacking threat and provided width to the Milanese giants.
With Maicon moving forward very often, he was supported by Esteban Cambiasso who drifted to the right and provided defensive cover to Maicon. On the right-wing, Maicon was ably supported by Samuel Eto’o who also tended to move infield to also give support to Diego Milito. Mourinho used Eto’o and Goran Pandev as defensive wingers who bought into his tactical systems and tweaked their own playing styles. Both of them played as a defensive winger and also supported Diego Milito in attack whenever required. Due to such player movement, the 4–2–3–1 formation transformed into a solid 4–4–1–1 to shore up the defense and increase solidity at the back as and when required.
When it came to attacking options, Inter had the best in Milito, Eto’o and Wesley Sneijder with Cambiasso chipping in with his amazing range of long passes. As soon as Inter won the ball at the back, the counter-attack would kick on and Cambiasso or Sneijder would start moving the ball to the wide areas. Sneijder acted as the perfect number 10 for the Inter Milan team and his passes would perfectly pick up any of the attackers. Partnering Cambiasso and Sneijder in the midfield was either Dejan Stankovic or Thiago Motta, with both of them playing as central midfielders who were very attack-minded. They often moved up the pitch to support the attack while Sneijder shuttled between supporting the attack as well as helping defense win the ball and start a counter-attack. Eto’o and Pandev moved to support Milito with Eto’o taking most of the workload by cutting in and Pandev mostly playing wide.
The specialty of Mourinho has always been in using specific players to neutralize specific attacking threats. One such instance was when he used left-back Christian Chivu in left midfield to block that side of the pitch during the second leg of the semifinal against Barcelona at Camp Nou. During the season, he never hesitated in sacrificing attacking ability to counter the likes of Messi and even Chelsea who played with 4–3–3 formation against Inter in the Champions League Round of 16. The team was instructed to man mark Chelsea so that they become less potent in front of goal and relied on the clinical ability of Milito, Sneijder, and Eto’o to convert the rare chances that came their way on the counter.
The Inter Milan team, with which Mourinho won the treble was no doubt a pragmatic, tactical, and very much organized squad. You can term them as defensive and boring but in the end, it was the same defensive solidity that won them the fabled treble. The transfers that he made, namely, Eto’o, Lucio, Sneijder, Pandev, Milito, and Motta, ensured that his team rivaled the Milan squad developed by the great Arrigo Sacchi. He delivered the treble and moved on to manage the Galacticos at Real Madrid with Inter Milan still struggling to replace him and emulate the success that he Mourinho delivered.
