Jose Mourinho is building an us-against-the-world army at Real Madrid
Real Madrid are seeing a shift in mentality this season, and not enough people are talking about it. Obviously, with any typical Jose Mourinho team, these things are bound to happen. The manager always focuses on bringing unity to his teams, and he is able to do that without any problems. No matter what is going on inside the club, he's always able to look at the club's enemies, for example, so that he is able to unite the club against them. He does this very often, and although it is much more difficult to do at Real Madrid, in some ways he is doing it yet again.
There have been so many press conferences where Mourinho has passionately defended some of his players and made them understand how charismatic and strong-willed a manager he actually is. Real Madrid have struggled to have unity, according to many journalists, in the last few seasons, and Mourinho's way to change that is simply to have literal enemies of the club and to call them out in public.
Jose Mourinho knows exactly how to get every player on board, even at Real Madrid
Obviously, Real Madrid's battle with referees is not unknown to even the most neutral of fans, and Mourinho knows that. He always talks about the problems that his team is facing against referees on a regular basis, and he always defends the club before he defends even himself.
Even in the most recent press conference, where he talked about the scheduling that La Liga has done with regard to them playing three away games in a row, in just one week's time without too much rest, he said: "We had to play tomorrow, but we play today. We had to play Sunday in Valencia, but we play Saturday. Three games with three travels in seven days, two days less to recover. It is a big gift we are receiving. Thank you. We hope to make them sad. These are the little things that contribute to the unity of a locker room."
Mourinho knows that better than anyone else because he is able to instil this mentality of us against the world in most of the clubs he goes to. Having this kind of manager come into the club when there are so many problems already that everyone is facing is a huge move from Florentino Perez: an attempt to stabilise relations among players. They now have some enemies, so to speak, to go against, so that they are able to channel their anger towards them and maintain integrity and unity together.
It is a strategy that has worked many times for Real Madrid in the past, but no one does it better than Mourinho, and he is showing that yet again. There will not be a press conference without Mourinho talking about some of the issues Real Madrid are facing, and every single time he contributes to the unity of the team.
