With the entertainment industry currently gripped by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, one particular homecoming is slightly going under the radar in Madrid. Whilst one could see parallels between José Mourinho’s return to the top role in World football and the perils faced by Odysseus on his journey back to Ithaca (to be fair, Homer didn’t send him to Tottenham Hotspur), his story could be much more relatable to that of Theseus, who returned home from slaying the Minotaur and then went onto unite Attica under Athenian rule - with the task to reunite a fractured dressing room under Mourinho rule following the failed experiments of Alonso and Arbeloa.
At the turn of the year, I wrote about the sacking of Xabi Alonso as a failed turning point for Real Madrid and more importantly, for Florentino Pérez. My ‘Theory of Never-lution’ surmised that the colourful President’s reliance on his previously successful ‘Galacticos’ model could be a death knell to Real Madrid as a force going forward. Nostradamus Nick has been correct so far, as Pérez’s decision to sack Alonso rather than empowering him to enact the changes that made him one of the world’s most sought after managers, saw him place Castilla manager Álvaro Arbeloa in charge for the remainder of the season - delivering another trophy less season, their first back-to-back trophy less seasons since 2006. In that article, I also prophesied that Pérez would once again return back to his Galacticos approach and in so, bring back a manager of the Ancelotti ilk that can handle a changing room full of egos - enter ‘The Special One’.
