Older, calmer, but still playing the hits: Mourinho and Madrid primed for clásico

Mourinho returns to the Camp Nou for the first time in 13 years, seeking to bring down Barcelona in the highly anticipated clásico.

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José Mourinho has done the por que?, the printout and the press conference no-show, and he’s been here only three months. The Real Madrid manager has played the classics without even playing a clásico. Not yet anyway, but it’s time: on Sunday night he returns to the stadium he first arrived at 30 transformative years ago as Bobby Robson’s talented young translator, and last visited in 2013 as the most famous manager in football.

Mourinho has been entrusted with attempting to bring about the destruction of Barcelona. It is not the first time: if his return is about nostalgia, which it is, that’s wrapped up in their rivals too. “The clásico is just another game in the championship but to say it’s a game like any other would be to lie, totally unreal,” Mourinho said on Wednesday, and he knows.

Madrid’s astonishing Champions League record since Mourinho was last here – following up the elusive decima , the 10th title which had evaded them for 12 years, with the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th in 10 years – played out without Barcelona. There has not been a European clásico since the 2011 Champions League semi-final when the man Pep Guardiola had just called the puto amo , the fucking master, produced his por que speech, asking why Barcelona were favoured by the continent’s referees and accusing Uefa of fixing it for them.

The rivalry is always there; in Mourinho’s case it is at the heart of it. The day he got the Madrid job in 2010 was the day he won the Champions League with Inter but its genesis lay in the semi-final, when he had sprinted across the Camp Nou pitch , finger raised, celebrating. Madrid were relieved and grateful, spared the sight of Barcelona lifting the European Cup in their stadium and shown how to stop a team that appeared unbeatable.