The main sensation of the Europa League at the stage of 1/8 finals was the departure from the drawing of London "Tottenham".
After the home victory with a score of 2: 0, Jose Mourinho's team in Zagreb allowed Dynamo forward Mislav Orsic to score a hat-trick, but she herself did not score even once in 120 minutes - and had to end her performance in the second most important club tournament ahead of schedule.
Being one of the favorites of the draw, the English club lost to an rival, whose transfer cost, according to the Tranfermarkt portal, is six times less.
Even worse, the head coach of the Balkans was forced to resign before the match due to a four-year prison sentence.
Thus, the Croats only emphasized the scale of the nightmare that befell the British.
Who was called the culprit of the failure?
The audience and journalists almost simultaneously pointed to Mourinho.
In his second year at the club, he was expected to make a breakthrough on all fronts.
After all, he finally did full pre-season preparation and acted in the transfer market exactly as he saw fit.
Suffice it to recall that during the reign of Londoners, the specialist's net spending on transfers amounted to £ 92 million, which is not much less than the total funds spent on all transactions under Mauricio Pochettino.
Although the ex-mentor of "Tottenham" worked in office for five seasons and led the team to the Champions League final.
The Portuguese, even in a competition of a lower rank, did not make it to the title meeting.
As well as lost the chances for gold in the national championship at the beginning of 2021.
An unsuccessful stretch that began in late January and included losses to Liverpool, Brighton, Chelsea, Manchester City and West Ham, not only struck Londoners off the gold medal list, but even qualifying for the zone The Champions League following the results of the rally made it problematic.
The sixth position in the table deprives of all meaning the autumn achievements and the Portuguese winning the title of the best coach of November.
Tottenham's own players have ceased to believe (for which even the team captain Hugo Lloris has already openly criticized them), the most famous footballers of the caliber of Antonio Cassano and Jamie Redknapp, as well as authoritative experts of the level of Rio Ferdinand.
Is this a problem for Mourinho?
In theory, no.
He has always worked under pressure, as the big clubs set ambitious goals for him when appointing a coach - and require him to fulfill every point of the plan.
The pressure of expectations at the top level is outrageous.
But if a specialist works exclusively in the camp of the grandees, he adapts to this.
After that, he turns away from the noise around him, implements the gaming philosophy and proves his own level by deeds (winning titles, educating young people, high-quality play with a shortage of funds or personnel).
So Jose shone at Inter, during the first stretch at Chelsea and, with a number of reservations, in his second season at Real.
However, then Mourinho's career began to decline - and turned into one continuous “groundhog day”.
The Portuguese, no matter where he came, shook up the clubs, gave instructions for a quick return to victorious traditions and encouraged the fans with momentary successes.
After that, his teams entered the peak of stagnation, the coach's relations with the leading performers, fans or management deteriorated.
For all the failures, external factors that made the work of the Portuguese impossible were recognized to be guilty.
As a result, the case ended with the dismissal of Jose.
The Tottenham case is as compressed as possible in time, but even over the past year and a half in London, the southerner has gone through all the stages of decadence.
And he got to the point that in the post-match reports, journalists are no longer discussing the tactics of a team with a decent composition, but the successor to Mourinho in the person of Julian Nagelsman or compensation that the owner of the club Daniel Levy will have to pay a specialist.
Why was the specialist stumped?
The point is a problem that is gradually becoming actual for a whole stratum of middle-aged specialists.
People who are committed exclusively to one tactical idea - and who have not changed their favorite concepts since they brought success.
Cosmetic changes in tactics and some timid structural changes do not transform anything globally.
They just slightly refresh the look of the old models of the game.
However, modern digital technologies and approaches to the study of rivals have become as informative as possible.
And therefore, the diversity of data very quickly reveals the manipulations of trainers of Mourinho's caliber, making them as vulnerable as possible.
In the case of the Portuguese, it has long been known that he gravitates towards a low defensive block, devoting maximum time in training to destruction.
Attacking principles are designated nominally - and are left to the mercy of creative football players.
If there are those in the composition, they interact with each other for a long time, are ready to adapt to the strengths of the partner and are technically perfect, then the model works at the very least.
And at first it even “blows up” the league: let us recall the fantastic statistics of the tandem Harry Kane - Son Heung Min or the bundles of Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba.
However, then injuries to one of the irreplaceable performers or the manipulation of rivals to neutralize the leaders destroy all of Jose's plans.
At the same time, dissatisfaction is brewing within the team, because playing only in counterattacks (moving a lot without the ball, constantly spending energy on selection, being under constant pressure from fear of making a mistake) is extremely inconvenient.
And when one is layered on top of another, exacerbated by a decline in results, there is a final breakdown of ties between the coach and the team.
How much does mental disagreement affect the outcome?
In Mourinho's teams, positive emotions are directly proportional to the number of victories.
For example, in Inter, which has become the last Italian team to win the Champions League today, the whole team stood behind Jose.
Forward Samuel Eto'o was ready to play left-back for the sake of the coach (which he later refused to do under Rafa Benitez), Dejan Stankovic and Wesley Sneijder call the time in Milan with Mourinho the best in his career, and Javier Zanetti sets the specialist as an example for working with details and attitude to the footballers.
Something similar can be found in the memories of the Chelsea players of that same “golden era”.
Even in the current Tottenham, the starting segment after the appointment of a coach was seen as ideal in terms of the internal structure of the team.
Mourinho immediately fell in love with Sona and Delle Alli, provoking fans to use the word "bromance" in describing their relationship.
Lloris was in seventh heaven when Jose defended him after a drunk driving situation.
And the mentor praised the home-grown hero Kane in every way, which caused bouts of affection in all of North London, favoring the "spurs".
But as soon as Tottenham faced the first signs of a serious ideological and tactical crisis, yesterday's favorites of Jose instantly ceased to be such.
Moreover, it was on them that a hail of criticism fell, if the club happened to lose points.
Dele Alli became that "extreme", which always appeared in the teams of the Portuguese, it was hardly necessary to personally focus attention on someone in order to distract the public from more global problems.
The defeat in the playoffs of the Europa League from Dynamo provoked the specialist to speak about the general collective lack of will.
Whereas misfires in the Premier League caused a waterfall of complaints from Jose, in which balls, referees, rivals, league leadership and, of course, their own players were called guilty of failures.
The same shifting of responsibility happened at Chelsea, personal conflicts provoked the departure of the old-timers of Real Madrid, the leading players of Manchester United on Twitter were veiled, but celebrated the dismissal of a specialist from Manchester.
In general, in the world of Jose and his teams, everything is fine only in the debut season of joint work.
At the end of the "candy-bouquet" period, the tactics of the Portuguese lose their effectiveness, which entails negative emotional conflicts within the team.
The coach increases the credit of trust due to transfers, search and showdowns with internal "enemies", as well as attempts to attribute a number of problems to force majeure.
But in the end, the situation still comes to collapse, because Mourinho does not have a plan "B" in the principles of work and has not been particularly observed in the past.
But what was effective in 2010, in 2021 no longer works even in computer simulators.
Is Jose's situation hopeless?
The answer to the question is still unknown.
But the dead end of the track along which he has been moving for the past five years is confirmed by the experience of a number of fellow Portuguese peers.
In particular, the example of Diego Simeone is indicative.
Despite the fact that he has been working at Atlético for 10 years already, which is completely atypical in the 21st century, the Argentinean goes through the stages of stagnation exactly the same as Mourinho.
After the triumph in the 2014 Spanish Championship and two exits to the Champions League finals, the tactical resource of the specialist dried up - and the 4-4-2 model, even after the purchases of such stars as João Felix, changed only nominally.
This was evident both in the analysis of the data and in the assessment of the functionality of the players who came to replace the style-forming players of the caliber of Rodrigo Hernandez.
When the time came for the decisive matches in international tournaments, the mental dominant of the Simeone model also appeared.
She was distinguished by increased caution, minimizing risks in a positional offensive and turning counterattacks into the main method of countering an opponent.
Sometimes the reassurance took on absurd proportions: in the recent Champions League 1/8 match against Chelsea, the Spanish team used six defenders at once when playing without the ball.
At the same time, Atlético did not include counterpressing, when there were losses in the opponent's half, and did not attack the space when it was required to advance the ball - everything ended in “sterile” possession.
At the beginning of the decade, this approach was successful.
But now, after the revolution in football, which was carried out by Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Julian Nagelsman, Pellegrino Matarazzo, Gian Piero Gasperini, it has become decidedly impossible to live in the old way.
Finally, doubts are dispelled by specialists who have lost their jobs this season, but have worked on similar patterns for the past few years.
André Villas-Boas never left the concept of non-adaptive ultra-high pressure, which is why he was fired from Marseille.
Julien Stéphane helped Rennes win the French Cup for the first time since 1971, reach the Europa League playoffs for the first time and make their first Ligue 1 top three in 88 years, making their Champions League debut.
But even this was not enough for the specialist to maintain his post, when the syndrome of the "second season" and the tactics taken for him as a carbon copy sent the team to the back of the table.
As for Lucien Favre in Borussia Dortmund, his passion for attack to the detriment of the balance between the lines led him to collapse again.
As, however, in the 2015/16 season: then, after the extravaganza with Mönchengladbach, he did not invent anything new.
And very quickly it was destroyed by competitors (five defeats in a row at the start of the season), who thoroughly studied the principles of a specialist, identifying vulnerabilities in tactics.
Mourinho's story only summarizes what is happening in modern football.
The game is evolving so quickly and so globally that even the slightest stagnation threatens to lose positions.
If new concepts and trends are despised in principle, then even coaches with a big name and a rich track record very quickly find themselves out of work.
Jose, of course, is still at Tottenham.
But in order not to be left without work, right now we need to change the rhythm and start living in step with the times.