'Donkey' sets his sights on giving old rival a kicking

Jesualdo Ferreira says he does not bear grudges but the mild-mannered Porto manager could be forgiven for approaching tonight's game against Chelsea with a strong desire to embarrass Jose Mourinho.
Their paths have crossed frequently since Ferreira was a teacher and Mourinho a student at the Lisbon Superior Institute for Physical Education in the early 80s, but never with so much at stake.
There is no record of animosity at the institute or when Mourinho, then a fitness coach, left Estrela da Amadora in 1991 after Ferreira was appointed manager. But their relationship suffered a potentially irreparable blow in 2002 when Ferreira agreed to become Mourinho's assistant at Benfica only to find the young manager did not want to work with him. Mourinho felt so strongly that he refused Benfica's offer and later joined Porto.
Both men seem to have been walking around with chips on their shoulders and matters deteriorated in February 2005 when Mourinho wrote in his then weekly column for the Portuguese magazine Record Dez: "One is a coach with a 30-year career, the other with a three-year one. The one with 30 years has never won anything; the one with three years has won a lot. The one who has coached for 30 years has an enormous career; the one with three years has a small career. The one with a 30-year career will be forgotten when he ends it; the one with three could end it right now and he could never be erased from history. This could be the story of a donkey who worked for 30 years but never became a horse."
Mourinho did not mention names but it seemed obvious he was referring to himself, then at Chelsea, and Ferreira, whose Sporting Braga had lost top spot in the Portuguese league that week after an unexpected defeat in the Minho derby against Vitoria Guimaraes.
In his 2003 autobiography Mourinho gave this explanation for his decision to reject the chance to rejoin Benfica, where he had been briefly in charge in 2000, when the club insisted that Ferreira remain part of the coaching team: "My ideas about the coaching staff were well defined. Baltemar Brito and Rui Faria would definitely come with me from Leiria. "[The goalkeepers' coach] would be replaced and I also wanted to work with [my former assistant at Benfica] Carlos Mozer again. So I could not find a place to fit Jesualdo Ferreira."
Manuel Vilarinho, the president at Benfica at the time, vividly remembers the meetings he had with Mourinho during that time and said this week: "We met twice and in both meetings we failed to reach an agreement because of Mourinho's unwillingness to accept Jesualdo Ferreira as his assistant. In the second meeting he told me: 'And what if in a training session I have to use the F-word? I would be ashamed of saying it in front of the professor.'
"But of course that was only an excuse. He just did not want to work with Jesualdo Ferreira but I felt we could not let Jesualdo go again. To me, people come first and I don't regret it."
Ferreira has been a coach since his 28th birthday when he took the Portugal under-17 team at the St Malo tournament and has divided his career between the Portuguese Football Association, including with the under-21s, and clubs such as Academica, Torreense, Estrela, Alverca, Benfica, Braga and Porto.
The 60-year-old has faced Mourinho six times and never won, suffering five defeats. Even the draw while at Braga would have given him little satisfaction. It came three days after Porto had beaten Celtic in the 2003 Uefa Cup final and Mourinho, having already won the league, sent out a reserve team.
The second meeting between the managers must hurt Ferreira most. The game has become part of the Mourinho myth, his half-time talk seen to have inspired Porto from almost certain defeat to victory at Ferreira's Benfica.
Porto had just had their captain, Jorge Costa, sent off but Mourinho told his players: "I have two things to say to you. The first one is that we are going to win this match. And the second is that, as we speak, they are shitting in their pants. And, as they will not come out to beat us, we will have to go and force the attack." Porto won 2-1 and the perception that Mourinho is a great motivator and Ferreira a dour tactician has endured.
Ferreira did not complete a full season in the top division until he was 54. Before that he was often ridiculed for his theoretical approach and nicknamed Professor Pardal after a cartoon inventor whose inventions rarely worked. Tonight, in his first meeting with Mourinho since 2004, Ferreira hopes his ideas will come together on the biggest stage of all.

Publicado em The Guardian, 21/2/2007