Football is exuberant in one of the oldest human practices, revenge
Eurobetis gave the bell in Rome and supported Mourinho’s side 1-2 in a Europa League match. The Betis players brightened up the day of the nearly 5,000 fans who traveled to Italy, but most of all they had their coach in mind. With Mourinho in the middle, it comes as no surprise to anyone that there are more than three points at stake in a football match. For the heartfelt initial greetings between the two coaches did not disguise the open wound Mourinho left years ago when he despised Pellegrini.
In March 2011, a journalist asked Mourinho if he feared suffering the same fate as his predecessor, Manuel Pellegrini. Mou replied unceremoniously: “If Madrid kicks me out, I’m not going to train Malaga, I’m going to a big club in England or Italy, not Malaga.” The Chilean coach had landed there, which the ‘Special One’ considered a step backwards, inappropriate for his stature.
The always polite and patient Pellegrini lasted more than eleven years. And so, in an interview with ‘La Gazzetta dello Sport’ the day before Roma-Betis, he praised Mou for his maturity: he had understood that courage and success are measured not only by what is achieved in the elite, but also by the courage to face new challenges and achieve results adapted to the possibilities: «Now Mourinho also lives for challenges, such as bringing Roma to the Champions League or winning the Conference League».
Pellegrini didn’t bite his tongue this time. He stressed that Mourinho had made mistakes at the last clubs where he had led projects that did not deliver the expected results. And ironically, he celebrated that more than a decade later Mou realized that by choosing to train Roma, the Portuguese coach was showing maturity (perhaps the one he didn’t have when he allowed himself to despise his professional colleague).
Football is a privileged context where players and coaches demonstrate some of the most fundamental values, which people have summed up in short aphorisms: ‘Where they give it, they take it’ or ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. In the great football theater, as in life, sooner or later the misdeeds are paid for. It is more: the restoration of balance demands to be compensated with a humiliation of the same caliber.
It is an unwritten but ancient and universal rule. In some African tribes what is known as “blood feud” reigns. If a person is murdered, the leaders of the killer tribe take care of the punishment: they carry him out or execute him themselves. They act in this way according to a worldview based on reciprocity and order: only an equal death can restore balance.
As a civilized substitute for our most archaic impulses, football shows more elegant forms of ‘vendetta’, without the blood reaching the river. Pellegrini saw his team ready, motivated them adequately and decided that the time had come. In the previous one he mocked his offender and in the match his team came back from a goal against and scored two goals that Mourinho must have experienced as two blows to the ‘Engineer’.
We have to thank Mourinho for his contribution to the spectacle of football. Because he’s left so many dead in the closet, every team that goes up against him seems to have a score to settle. In the 17th century, foreigners visiting the Iberian Peninsula said that the most widespread custom here was “mocking and chufletas” and that there was no Hispanic who did not answer an offense in unique ways. We Spaniards brought to America our conception of honor and the ways in which our differences should be settled: waiting for your moment to strike the restorative blow, with a mixture of sharp-tongued and symbolic blow. No fists.
The Chilean coach learned that on Iberian soil, perhaps in Malaga. “God compensates,” I heard him say years ago, referring to how he wouldn’t have had the chance to train the best Malaga in his history, if they hadn’t kicked him in Madrid. I don’t know if divine justice exists, but earthly justice was fulfilled at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on Thursday. Sorry, Mou: ‘Occhio per occhio, dente per dente’.
Source: La Verdad
I’m an experienced news author and editor based in New York City. I specialize in covering healthcare news stories for Today Times Live, helping to keep readers informed on the latest developments related to the industry. I have a deep understanding of medical topics, including emerging treatments and drugs, the changing laws that regulate healthcare providers, and other matters that affect public health.
