The week Mourinho jumped the shark

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The question of the moment is this: do we want him here? Jose Mourinho has been making noises all season that he sees his future in the Premier League; it is, he says, his natural home.

For some time, the suggestion has been that he is ear-marked as Sir Alex Ferguson's successor at Manchester United, whenever it is the great man decides to step down. The only manager with an ego sufficient not to be daunted by such a succession, unlike those who would prefer to wait for someone else to wilt in Ferguson's lingering shadow before taking control, he would have no problem sitting himself in the Old Trafford dugout. But after the events of this week, who is going to roll out the red carpet now?

For those of us who earn our corn engaging with the soap opera that is the professional game in this country, there can only be one answer: bring him on.

Back in the seventies, reporters covering Manchester football loved it when Tommy Docherty was in charge at United. Every week, one of them once told me, they would turn up to his press conferences and he would fill their notebooks with brilliant copy. Every week he would supply the back page story. Reputations were built second-hand on his gags.

Mourinho would be the same. The man who believes that the match starts in the press conference is an endless source of stories. I suspect were he to go to United, papers would be obliged to recruit Mourinho correspondents just to keep up with his antics. A whole generation of modern Boswells would be created. What fun they would all have, being at the centre of the stories he would spin.

From a fan's perspective, however, I am not so certain we would want him after what went on in Spain. In Hollywood they have an expression for what happened this week. It was coined after an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz was filmed leaping in water-skis over a great white and has come to denote the precise moment when someone fatally undermines a previously unimpeachable reputation by going too far. This was undoubtedly the week in which Mourinho jumped the shark.

Make no mistake about it: the man is a genius. His tactical nous, his organisational ability, his man-management, his media savvy are second to none in the game. He did not win two European Cups and a hatful of domestic trophies in four different leagues by chance. Ruthless, meticulous, charismatic: he has it all. Except, it now appears, a volume control.

His cynicism before, during and after the Champions League semi between his Madrid team and Barcelona has been breath-taking even by his own standards. In an already noxious atmosphere, he ratcheted up the rancour to the point where all control was lost. This was a Clasico that made last weekend's incendiary Old Firm clash look like a pre-season friendly. Sure, Barcelona's players did themselves no favours by the childish play-acting with which they went about their business. With every dive, with every clutch of their two faces, they proved themselves incapable of rising above the provocation. But the cordite in the tie was fired by the Madrid coach.

It was a deliberate tactic. And, just as his instruction to kick Lionel Messi at every opportunity was a tactic, it was one unworthy of a man in his position. Actually, almost everything he did this week - from parking the bus in front of goal to his paranoid insistence Barca were favoured by referees because of their association with Unicef - was unworthy of his position.

This is Real Madrid, for goodness sake, nine-times winners of the European Cup, and he had them behaving like cheap arrivistes. Yes, he might counter that with the claim that anything and everything is legitimate in the pursuit of victory. But that's the thing: he didn't even win. And this is what will have worried many about Mourinho this week: he has demonstrated he has no limits.

Clubs like Madrid and United, however, are defined by certain expectations, not least of progressive, attacking football. Some of their followers would argue that attack is the primary objective, beyond even the pursuit of victory. After all, Ferguson did not go to Gelsenkirchen this week determined above all things not to lose. He went there with a team set up to take advantage by incessant attack. That was what the history of his club expects.

The history of Real Madrid casts certain expectations over the present too. They do not include what happened this week: the spoiling, the roughhouse, the comical levels of bad losing. The woeful, awful, ugly cynicism that turned El Clasico into a stinker.

Mourinho must take responsibility for that. His managerial method has always been to be the sole figurehead. His insistence is that his clubs speak with one voice: his. Now he has given final proof of what that voice sounds like, there are many, particularly those with an affection for the red shirt, who would not wish to hear too much of it over here.