José Mourinho says he is calmer now so when the rest of the bench emptied, sprinting down the touchline to celebrate the 90th-minute goal that finally delivered victory on his first game in charge of Real Madrid in 4,380 days, he didn’t set off with them. Instead, he clenched his fists, got to his feet and walked down the touchline behind the subs, watching them head, shouting, towards Carlos Espí. As they piled on down in the corner, he pulled over his captain Fede Valverde for a word.
Which might just have been: phew. For all those stars; for all that Mourinho’s main task might just have been been to find a way to fit Kylian Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior and Jude Bellingham together; for all that he had introduced Yan Diomande, the most expensive player in the club’s history, it was a 21-year-old, unknown six months ago and unexpectedly signed from Levante, who got the goal that secured victory upon the coach’s second coming. Espí, whose goals had rescued Levante from relegation last season and who is still living at Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground like his coach, the two of them sharing breakfast every morning, was signed for pretty much this: to be a different type of striker, an old-school No 9, with a presence in the area.
And when a scrappy, broken-up move ended with Mbappé seeing the ball run away from him in the area, there he was to force it over the line. Perhaps even to pose a question: is his a profile they could do with and not just in reserve? This time, at least, it had worked.
Mourinho’s first game since a 4-2 win over Osasuna in May 2013 began with the photographers abandoning their places behind the goal to surround him on the bench, no doubt what the attraction was; it ended with him hugging the Espanyol coach Manolo González, high-fiving the referee and ducking down the tunnel. In between time, reality was revealed, which he surely always imagined it would be: it is early, solutions are never immediate, and he had said that Espanyol were a good side. At times, they showed it too.
Madrid had more chances, but Manolo’s team had largely succeeded in limiting the visitors. On a night where Madrid exhibited some of the old flaws, there were doubts still – it is the first day after all – but they were at least allayed for a little while. There will be other days, sterner tests of this team; there will also be sterner tests of Mourinho’s temperament, of course.
When Madrid faced Benfica in the spring, Mourinho had described his time there as “three hard, intense, sometimes violent years”. But the thing about nostalgia is that as the bad slips into the distance, only the good remains. Mourinho said that he is “not the kind of man who misses anything”, someone who has “regrets”; plenty though had missed him, the president Florentino Pérez first among them.
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