Real Madrid travel to Barça on Sunday, so get ready for the Special One’s fireworks, haranguing and computer printouts

La Liga: Barcelona v Real Madrid, Nou Camp, Sunday, 8pm (Live on Premier Sports 1)

September was a difficult month for José Mourinho. His troubles began when Troy Parrott was sprung from the bench to score a late, historic winner in La Liga for Real Betis against Mourinho’s Real Madrid at La Cartuja.

Two weeks later, Real Madrid went down 2-1 to Atletico in the Madrid derby, which left them trailing a rampant Barça by six points in the league, a sizeable gap before leaves began falling from the trees.

Backed into a corner, the Real Madrid manager came out swinging. We saw the old Mourinho. Has he ever gone away?

During summer, when Mourinho (63) was unveiled as head coach – the fourth in a little over a year to sit in the electric chair at Real – there was talk about how he had mellowed in old age.

Yet only last year he got a fine and a three-match ban in Turkey for pinching rival coach Okan Buruk’s nose after an Istanbul derby. Buruk, theatrically, fell to the ground, holding his face as though his nose had been hacked off. A leopard cannot change its spots. Mourinho said as much during an unguarded moment in August, admitting: “I can’t be what I am not.”

In the post-match press conference after defeat to Diego Simeone’s Atletico, Mourinho paused for what seemed an eternity before answering the first question. His arms were folded. He sat directly behind a small LG monitor. Its brand slogan caught the eye. The South Korean electronics company’s exhortation, “Life’s Good”, was completely at odds with Mourinho’s mood. Mourinho was sullen. He seemed tired. He spoke slowly and deliberately.

“We can skip the press conference because the story of the game is here,” he said, raising up a coloured printout of two over-the-top tackles on his players during the game, one by Cuti Romero on Jude Bellingham, the other by Kang-in Lee on Fede Valverde. These were fouls that warranted “clear” red cards in Mourinho’s opinion.

Instead, it was Real who were reduced to 10 men in the game’s decisive moment. A gormless challenge by centre back Dean Huijsen on Atletico’s Giuliano Simeone, early in the second half, led to a penalty and Atletico’s opening goal.

Mourinho sensed there were unseen forces acting against him. “It is all very strange,” he said, inviting us into the haunted house of his mind, adding mysteriously: “A week before, it was already known who the referee was.”

The fault lay not with the referee, though, he said. The referee was not personally to blame. Mourinho felt sorry for him: “A 41-year-old referee who isn’t even an international. The poor guy came here, and he couldn’t handle the pressure.”

Mourinho then had a dig at the video assistant referee, “Mr Trujillo”. He was extremely knowledgeable on his track record, listing several matches in which Daniel Jesús Trujillo Suárez ruled against Real Madrid in VAR decisions, including a Copa del Rey tie against Real Sociedad and matches against Osasuna and Girona.

Not to mention, Mourinho said, VAR decisions that went in favour of Atletico and Barça in other games, citing specific examples. He had his homework done. The joke doing the rounds, especially given the dramatic flourish with the printout, was that Mourinho prepared better for the press conference, excuses at hand, than he did for the match.

Mourinho was helped by Real’s communications department, which cranked a mobile printer into action at Atletico’s stadium minutes after the final whistle – using images taken from the sports newspaper Marca’s Instagram account – so Mourinho could be armed before facing the world’s media. The following day Catalan newspaper Sport carried a front-page photo of Mourinho with the headline “Unhinged”.

Mourinho had left Real in 2013 after three scorched-earth years in charge. It was the height of the Lionel Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo rivalry, both players achieving feats unseen in living memory. In the dugouts, Mourinho’s anti-Barça tactics were so abrasive that it left his rival, Pep Guardiola, burnt out and forced into a year’s sabbatical in New York. Now Mourinho has returned to Spain.

Before finishing his speech, Mourinho said he had been naive: “I thought I’d find a league different from the one I left. They told me, ‘No,’ and they explained why it wasn’t different from the league I left years ago.”

No one is better at relaying Real’s party line than Mourinho. It’s a big part of the reason he was summoned from the wilderness, more than a decade after he’d won his last league title (at Chelsea in 2015), by Real’s embattled president Florentino Pérez, a man also prone to bouts of paranoia. It’s why Mourinho is the only Real Madrid coach to have his name serenaded at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium during matches.

Mourinho lacks some of the sparkle since last he managed Madrid. He has been sleeping at Valdebebas, the club’s training ground. He looks increasingly dishevelled. Gone is the €26,000 grey Giorgio Armani overcoat. Now he wears mostly crumpled polo shirts or a training top. His smouldering good looks have departed him. Often, he is unshaven or sporting a grey beard.

He has, however, lost none of his deviousness. During the recent, three-week international break he carried on his “victimismo” communications strategy, stoking the fires about an anti-Real Madrid refereeing conspiracy in La Liga, airing, for the first time in public since his Second Coming, the explosive name “Negreira”, a reference to former senior Spanish refereeing official Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.

The Negreira case dates to 2023 when the radio station Cadena Ser broke the story about an investigation by the Spanish tax authority into filings by Negreira companies, including payments from Barça, over the period 2001 to 2018, totalling €8.4 million.

What was expected in return for these generous payments to a vice-president of Spain’s referring association? According to leaked testimony given by Negreira to the Spanish Tax Authority, they were “to make sure no refereeing decisions were made against them, which is to say, for everything to be neutral”.

Barça claim innocence, maintaining the club had hired Negreira to provide reports “related to professional refereeing”. Former coaches Luis Enrique (2014-2017) and Ernesto Valverde (2017-2020) have both testified they were unaware such refereeing reports existed. The investigation is continuing.

Mourinho has his own thoughts about the saga. While giving an interview to Corriere dello Sport, the Italian sports newspaper, earlier in the month, he hinted he always suspected the success of Guardiola’s immortal Barça team was helped by an invisible hand: “I arrived at Real Madrid during prime Negreira years. I remember no one knew about it, but we felt and lived it.”

Mourinho’s tactics – causing distraction and playing the victim – are working to a point. After a recent, edgy 1-0 victory over Villarreal in La Liga – in which Real’s Vinícius Júnior was sent off – Mourinho and his coaching staff spent the game haranguing the ref and the fourth official. Afterwards, he picked up a fine for refusing to do the game’s post-match press conference.

Kylian Mbappé and Vini jnr have been in the crosshairs with Real’s fans. At the Bernabéu during the Villarreal game, though, fans took to whistling the referee instead of their two privileged, lacklustre stars. There is less talk in Spain about Mourinho’s underperforming team than about referees and alleged conspiracies.

Javier Tebas, La Liga’s president, has weighed into the arguments with both feet. In a salty social media post, Tebas compared Real’s communications tactics to those of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. Real Madrid called on him to resign. Tebas has refused, claiming he won’t bow to Real and their “lapdogs” in the media.

Mourinho has a tricky hand to play. The pressure is huge. At his disposal, he has the most talented squad in world football, including Mbappé, a resurgent Bellingham, the gifted Arda Güler and teenage sensation Yan Diomande, reportedly the most expensive player in Real’s history.

But the pieces of the jigsaw aren’t fitting together – yet. Since the departure of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric, Real lack control in midfield. This has been made more glaringly apparent since the club bungled the signing of Spain’s midfield general Rodri during the summer.

Rodri has joined ancient rivals Barça instead. Barça are averaging more than four goals a game. All eyes will be on Mourinho as his men take on Barça at the Camp Nou on Sunday. If Barça were to administer a heavy defeat and open an insurmountable nine-point gap in the title race then Mourinho’s bench would begin to tremble.

Trent Alexander-Arnold’s Spanish nightmare

Two years ago, Trent Alexander-Arnold told Sky Sports in an interview how he wanted to win the Ballon d’Or award. At the time, it seemed an audacious thing to say. Now it feels even more ridiculous.

After nine, trophy-laden seasons at Liverpool, his boyhood club, where he was a captain-in-waiting, Alexander-Arnold decided to hit out for Spain. It’s been a disastrous move. His career is dead ending. He has just turned 28. During the summer, he missed out on the World Cup finals, failing to make Thomas Tuchel’s England squad.

The previous summer, his long signposted move to Real was fast-tracked – the club paying a reported fee of €10 million, when they could have got him for free by holding out for a couple of weeks – so he could join their squad for the inaugural Fifa Club World Cup in the United States.

At his Real Madrid unveiling, he won over Madridistas by speaking in Spanish. He held his own in the Club World Cup, starting five of six games, before Real were knocked out in the semi-finals. But last season in La Liga was a disappointment as he struggled with two injuries. This season has been worse.

Mourinho has been favouring new signing Denzel Dumfries as a right back. Mourinho has even started to play Fede Valverde in that berth, which leaves Alexander-Arnold as third choice. At this rate, he may well return to England next summer humbled, dreams of the Ballon d’Or having turned to dust.