Customer Reviews

Mourinho

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The supplier over delivered, and I was gladly impressed with the level of service.

The book opens a bit slow, but it honors the critiques posted within it. It is interesting, and insightful, to the appropriate level. There is little to no contribution from Mourinho to this book, so that is gap, but the content does not lose any value because of that.

I love Jose Mourinho as a manager and was thrilled to this book in the amazon market. Patrick Barclay is a recognized football journalist and it shows in his handling of the issues. This book presented a very fair and objective view of Mourinho's career at the time that the book was written. Of course, Jose has gone a long way since the publication of this book, and if Barclay was to write about that, i would be happy to read it as well.
Covering his controversies and managerial issues, this book gives a good peek into the character o Jose Mourinho. As the title of the book says, it is about the anatomy of Mourinho, his work persona, family persona, how he became what he is today. Many people (including me) fail to realize his struggles and hardships before he became the legendary manager he is today and this book made me aware of that reality, before Jose was Jose Mourinho.
With straight from the heart interviews from his gurus and coworkers and friends, Barclay has done a great job of profiling Mourinho. Again, this book is not about Mourinho's managerial strategies, but his managing gets its due mention. It is about Mourinho as a man, as a person, his 'anatomy' and the writing could not be more perfectly aligned with the theme of the book. Dont expect to read, "Mourinho decided to mark Ronaldinho with Khalid Boularouz and that changed everything" in this book. Rather, if you are lookign to understand what Jose stands for in football, among journalists, among fans, his public stature and personal endurance, this book is perfect for you. The only reason it got 4 stars instead of 5 was that it may be a bit too short. I wish it went for a 100 more pages.

This book is not bad but if you are looking for an in depth analysis of Jose Mourinho's career so far then maybe look elsewhere. The book goes into great depth of Mourinho's role as an assistant to Bobby Robson but not probably not into as much detail to his time at Porto and Chelsea as I would have liked. From reading this book it seems that the majority of the material was obtained from interviews and so again there is not a huge amount of insight into his tactical approach and into his specific coaching philosophies. Much of the material is English focused as there is a constant comparing of Mourinho with previous British managers such as Brian Clough,Alex Ferguson etc. This book is neatly put together and altogether not a bad summary of Jose Mourinho and his career up to 2005. 4 stars