Mourinho to usher in a new era at Real COMMENT Will another summer spending spree and the arrival of Jose Mourinho finally end Real Madrid’s title drought? By Aswin Kanumarath While Barcelona were celebrating their treble at the end of the 2008-09 season, Real Madrid were enduring yet another trophy-less campaign. The summer that followed saw a flurry of changes. Florentino Perez took over as president again and straightaway embarked on assembling the second set of the Galacticos. Former World Players of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka were snapped up for record-shattering fees, along with marquee players like Xabi Alonso, Karim Benzema, and Raul Albiol. Manuel Pellegrini replaced Juande Ramos as manager. Fast forward one season and nothing has seemingly changed. Barcelona finished as Spanish champions yet again while Real ended their season without silverware. Just like the previous campaign, Barca embarrassed Real in the El Clasico home and away. Real were also knocked out of the Champions League in the second round for the fifth consecutive season. Failure has apparently not deterred Perez from his Modus Operandi. He has again spent the summer signing a host of players. He has also replaced the manager. But there are reasons to believe that, unlike last season, this time Real might be genuine title contenders. Unlike last season, when Perez sought to sign the world’s best players, this time he did one better. He signed the world’s best manager: Jose Mourinho. If there is one man who can take Real’s fate by the scruff of its neck and turn it around, it is this man, fresh from a treble-winning campaign at Inter Milan. To begin with, Pellegrini was never the man to be handed the reins at Real. He might have transformed Villarreal from a mid-table club to Champions League regulars but managing a club of Real’s stature is something else altogether. Managing Real is as much about managing egos as it is about managing players. Mourinho, having previously handled the likes of Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben and Didier Drogba, is tailormade for the job. Moreover, it is an established fact that going by current form Real are the second-best team in Spain. Both Ramos and Pellegrini managed to overcome the rest of the clubs, it was only Barcelona who denied them the title. So Mourinho’s primary task would be to get the better of the Catalans. Herein lies the problem. Unlike Real, most of Barca’s players are home-grown. They have grown up playing the Catalonians’ unique brand of football from a young age. At Real, every season begins with a new bunch of players added to the existing crop and they are under pressure to get used to playing as one as fast as possible. It will be Mourinho’s responsibility to instill his philosophy into Real’s current squad as quickly as possible. He has a host of individual talent at his disposal. It falls on him to get the best out of them and make them play as a group. Also, unlike Ronaldo and Kaka, most of the new signings, though talented, are yet to make it big at club level. Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira may have impressed for Germany at the World Cup but are yet to become genuine world class talents. They will be further spurred on by the opportunity to work under Mourinho, which incidentally is the reason the duo joined the Spanish giants. Other signings like Angel di Maria, Sergio Canales and Pedro Leon have shown glimpses of talent at their previous clubs. They now have the perfect stage to make the world take notice. They also have that precious something that a World Player of the Year cannot possibly retain: Fire in the belly. Another signing Ricardo Carvalho has previously worked under Mourinho at Chelsea and Porto. The move for the Portuguese defender speaks of experience and familiarity. Mourinho is not known to be wrong in his judgement. Despite what was said, Ronaldo did not have a poor first season unless trophies are the yardstick. He scored 33 goals in all competitions and set up another 7. His strike partner Gonzalo Higuain was close behind netting 29 goals and making 6 more. Skipper Iker Casillas, as always, was outstanding in goal as was Sergio Ramos, in his patented wing-back position. Real scored 102 goals in the league, 4 more than Barca did. All this goes to show that Real have no dearth of quality. Moreover, Mourinho has the unique record of remaining unbeaten in his last 136 home matches, a run that stretches on through his stints at Inter, Chelsea and Porto. Since 2003, he averages at least 2 trophies at each of the clubs he has coached. Every thing about the man points glaringly to the fact that he is the one to end Real’s title-hunt. After being comprehensively beaten home and away by Barca in the Champions League group stages last season, Mourinho’s Inter returned to oust the holders with a 3-2 aggregate in the semifinals. En route he had also beaten former employers Chelsea in both legs of the quarterfinals. A man with such elevated standards as Mourinho’s will also have personal milestones in mind. By lifting the Champions League trophy with Inter and Porto, he became only the third coach to win Europe’s biggest prize with two different clubs. He will be aiming to become the first one to make it three. Also, having won the league title in England and Italy, the 47-year-old can now become the first manager ever to win in Spain as well thus earning the football equivalent of the Grand Slam. For all of Barca’s home-grown players, it could be their former translator, whom they groomed into a coach, who might end their dominance. Come May, if Perez and his boys parade Madrid on an open bus with a trophy in hand, Mourinho will undoubtedly be the Special One.