Malaga were on the agenda. Nobody asked about Malaga.
Jose Mourinho sat down with reporters on Saturday lunchtime, 24 hours before Malaga arrive at the Bernabeu. The visitors barely came up.
What did come up was the Ballon d’Or, now less than two months away from the ceremony on 26 October. Mourinho offered his own test for the award: it belongs to the players the game misses once they stop. Maradona, Ronaldo Nazario, Messi, Zidane, Matthaus.
Then he went further. A team trophy, in his reading, counts for nothing here. Not the Champions League. Not the World Cup.
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If trophies decide it, give it to a coach
The Portuguese took his own logic to its endpoint. If the prize is really about collective success, he argued, hand it to Luis Enrique for the Champions League, or to Luis de la Fuente for what Spain have done.
Nobody in the room needed the target spelled out. PSG and Spain have swept the team honours this season, and Mourinho has no intention of letting that convert into an individual award.
The best player in the world, he said, is not necessarily in Paris or in the Spain squad. There are two, three, four names who deserve it. His are at Real Madrid.
A message with a thin coat of paint on it
He never said Kylian Mbappe. He talked about the player who made his mark individually this summer, which does the same job and lets him keep his hands clean.
His last shot landed on the process. Mourinho thinks there is politics in the Ballon d’Or, and that the trophy loses something every time politics gets the upper hand. That was aimed at the voting as much as at the favourites.
None of this is out of character for him, and the timing is not accidental either. Clubs are lobbying hard for their players with the count weeks away. Real Madrid have now entered that fight through their manager.
Verdict on 26 October.
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