Well it’s been very… Jose… so far!
Not yet into October, and AS Roma have replaced the man who replaced Jose Mourinho already. Meanwhile, Jose and Fenerbahce are… well they were swimming perfectly freely and having a great time… but in the ocean, there’s ALWAYS a bigger fish…
So picking up from where we left things, now it has closed and ended, let’s assess how the transfer window has gone for Jose and how his squad really looks ahead of his Turkish adventure.
Is the squad better coming into this season than it finished the last? I would say so, yes. In have come ASM, En-Nesyri, Amrabat, Kostic, Tosun and a couple of others. Notable outgoings would be the retirement of Bonnuci, the acrimonious departure of Batshuayi to… them… , and the one big sale was that of 30 million midfielder Ferdi Kadıoğlu to Brighton (who seem to have a knack of spotting talent), who we will keep a close eye on his development…
I’d say the biggest worry of the transfer window for Fener wasn’t even to do with them…
The champions seem to have gotten stronger. Their departures I don’t see as harmful to them, and their incomings have seen one of the biggest stories of the entire window… Ziyech joining permanently, Mertens staying for another year, Batshuayi we have mentioned, Gabriel Sara for 18 million in from Norwich, others too…but nothing garnered quite the attention of their final piece of business…
Not one anyone expected, but opportunity knocked and suddenly, Galatasaray had one of the best centre forwards in the world playing for them…
You can say what you want about his parent club’s conduct with him recently, a man who not so long ago was the main component of them winning a first scudetto since the days of Diego Maradona… but Antonio Conte wanted to go with Lukaku, and so Victor Osimhen was out. And either because one club couldn’t get a deal done in time, or another chose to go with a Brentford forward who spent half of last season at home, this world class striker had no home. But so the benefits of a later shutting transfer window came through, and a deal was done that suited everyone (Napoli got rid of a player they didn’t want, Osimhen had a place to play football as the main man again for this season, and Gala landed themselves with a world class striker)… a deal that suited everyone… apart from those at Fenerbahce of course. One wonders how the goals will stack up with Osimhen against El-Nesyri come the end of the season…
With the Fenerbahce squad having now taken shape (until January at least), let’s talk about Mourinho’s speciality… European football…
Or is it his speciality anymore…?
Drama always follows Jose and his teams… but so does success, again… or IT DID… a 91st minute own goal gave them a chance, and then a 118th minute penalty meant that Mourinho’s return to the top table of European football was over before his domestic season even began…
And so, a step down was their next route. Into the Europa League they went. And much like its bigger and smaller brothers, the number 2 UEFA club competition had a new league format. This meant not the usual 3 opponents in the opening stages, but instead EIGHT… Naturally, there was always going to be some fun storylines crop up from their draw, but we got the one we really wanted …
With all the respect to Union Saint-Gilloise, Twente, AZ, Slavia Prague, Bilboa, Lyon and Midtjylland, it is the fixture to take place on October 24th that set the pulses racing. And I’m sure Jose will probably speaking glowingly of his love for the fans and the club, but he surely won’t be able to resist a subtle and probably sly dig at the current incumbent of the Manchester United hotseat… that is of course… presuming it is still Mr Ten Hag by the time the fixture comes around…
Before that though, it was hosting Union Saint-Gilloise that was on the agenda. Although the match itself was not primarily on Jose’s mind leading up to it, it didn’t seem that way anyway… as a typically … understated… Mourinho made his feelings clear in the pre match presser…
And naturally, the match itself was equally eventful… A game seemingly dominated by the Turkish hosts saw plenty of late drama. Of ALL PEOPLE it was former Leicester City defender Caglar Soyuncu that opened the scoring, an own goal by Christian Burgess (yes, an Englishman formerly of Portsmouth, Peterborough United and others) looked to give Fener a deserved win, but a late consolation for the Belgian visitors didn’t help the nerves. Oh, and we got a red card a piece; with Fener’s Bright Osayi-Samuel getting a second yellow late on, AND giving away a penalty… which was subsequently SAVED by Livakovic (I wonder how many times he’s gonna save his team this season by the way…), and that was after a straight red for Kevin Mac Allister (yes, Alexis’ brother) with just under 20 minutes remaining. But an opening win for Mourinho, a two time former winner of this cup of course… a trip to Twente of Holland is their next European appointment.
Meanwhile, domestically it has been par for the course for Fenerbahce. You’d expect as much from a team under a multi-time league winning manager all around Europe, and a team who the previous season ended with 99 points. 5 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat (more on that shortly) sounds pretty solid, but if the 23/24 season is anything to go by, “pretty solid” may not be enough to win that league title they so crave. 4 clean sheets in those games shows that the classic Mourinho pragmatism still remains, or perhaps more down to the skills of their highly-rated Croatian shot stopper between the sticks…
As we have made reference to already, it seems only perfection may be enough to win the Super Lig this season, and that in no small part is down to the strength of their main competition. And in somewhat of a rarity for Mourinho in big games, he found himself outfought and defeated. Relatively comfortably, in their own back yard.
More possession, more shots, and yet, it never really seemed like Fenerbahce would get the win over their great rivals. And even more oddly, their typically reliable goalkeeper was credited with the opener, an own goal. Within 10 minutes, the deficit had doubled, and a third of the way into the game Fenerbahce had a mountain to climb.
The half time team talk from the Portuguese could do no good, 15 minutes into the second half a nightmare had become a disaster, Galatasaray lead the Istanbul Derby by THREE. A penalty from Dzeko not long after proved only to be a consolation, as it was a relatively comfortable win for the visitors. Given the incredibly tight margins of the previous season, the three point difference that cut so deep in ruining what would’ve usually been a remarkable season with NINETY NINE points, how crucial could this loss prove to be…?
In general though, assessing the start of the Turkish adventure at Fenerbahce for Jose Mourinho, I’d probably put it at maybe a 6.5/10. Results have been relatively good, the squad is in a pretty good place (keeping the goalkeeper and bringing in the likes of ASM and En-Nesyri shows that), however… the huge disappointment of falling at the very early stages of the Champions League, and the early season loss to their biggest rivals are wounds that may prove to be scars. Maybe the Europa League presents a greater chance of silverware (something that has become a staple of his managerial career, as Jose often likes to remind us… with the one notable exception of course…), and maybe Fenerbahce will get their revenge in the return fixture later in the season against the CURRENT Turkish Champions… or maybe it’ll go the other way, and before we know it, Mourinho is neighbours with his old friend Cristiano again…
But as always, it’s been very… Jose… and that in itself makes this Mourinho-Fenerbahce experiment a typically-enthralling project to watch unfold… so stay tuned!
And finally… it isn’t all serious and complaints from Jose in Turkey, in fact the match against Antalyaspor brought about a more comical incident, for everyone else at least…
Typically, Jose was enraged by a referee decision… this time to rule out Edin Dzeko’s goal for offside. So outraged was Mourinho that he proceeded to take out his laptop to show a still image of the apparent offside call (or not in Jose’s opinion), placing said laptop in-front of a tv camera, for the world to see his evidence of his perceived injustice. The referee took exception to the protests, and promptly dished out a yellow card.
For the record, Fener won the game 2-0.
It’s a silly old game isn’t it?
Josh.