An excellent article from George Caulkin in last week's Sunday newspaper. Worth a mention
Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola open up about their inspiration in new film Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager
He lived in black and white, from the gloom of Langley Park colliery to the glare of the floodlights and the glorious monochrome of Newcastle United, the club he adored. Sir Bobby Robson’s legacy endures in celluloid memories of Paul Gascoigne’s tears, Maradona’s fist, the flashing boots of Gary Lineker, Ronaldo and Alan Shearer, in the pioneering medical treatment funded by his Foundation. It is there, too, in the red and blue of Manchester.
Robson’s is a story well told, the boyhood visits to St James’ Park, his graft in the village pit, the playing career with Fulham and West Bromwich Albion, managerial sorcery at Ipswich Town, a World Cup semi-final, the craving and curiosity which led him to the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and back home to Tyneside. There were five one-on-ones with cancer, the illness which never defined but finally claimed him.
Gary Lineker hails Robson as the best of all English managers and in terms of length and breadth and success and experience, it is an incomparable record. A new film reflects on how that influence remains current. Among archive footage and emotive interviews, two driven men explain how Robson shaped and guided them.
For all their rivalry, the historic conflict between Manchester City and Manchester United and their grapple for dominance in the Premier League, where they sit first and second, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola share a bond. Both were nurtured by Robson. “Our relationship was phenomenal,” Mourinho says. Guardiola describes him as “special,” and “one of the nicest, nicest persons I’ve met.”
The first hour of Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager builds to a Catalan crescendo and one of the most remarkable, charged seasons in Barcelona’s history. Robson’s career had been ascending to that point — “my destiny,” he wrote — Mourinho was the geeky translator he took with him from Sporting Lisbon and Porto, paying him from his own salary, Guardiola the club’s gilded midfield player.
Appointed in 1996, Robson replaced Johan Cruyff, who had shaped Barcelona’s modern identity, winning La Liga four times in succession. “Cruyff built the cathedral,” Guardiola once said but there had been no trophies for two years, disputes with directors, competing factions. Off the pitch, it was a “political storm,” as Sir Bobby put it, “and I wasn’t a political animal.”
“They were spot on when they chose Mr Robson to be the next one,” Mourinho says in the film. “(But) Barcelona was a really difficult moment, because it was the moment of the conflict between the club and Johan Cruyff.” “It was a tough, tough task,” Guardiola says. “Barcelona was a city divided,” Robson says. “It was my surprise party.”
He inherited fine players; Guardiola, Luis Figo, Hristo Stoichkov, Laurent Blanc, Gheorghe Popescu. To that mix, he added a blistering centre-forward, staking his reputation and a world record $20m on signing Ronaldo, the Brazil international, from PSV Eindhoven.
The transfer was a triumph. There were 47 goals in 49 appearances, one of which, against SD Compostela on October 11, saw the striker run from his own half, evading tackles and dribbling past defenders before scoring. Television cameras cut to Robson clasping his own head in disbelief. “Look at that, Jose. Just look,” he said on the bench. “What a goal!”
“[Ronaldo] was running, running,” Guardiola says. “We said ‘pass the ball’. He don’t pass the ball. Pass the ball. He don’t pass the ball. And after he scored the goal, we said ‘well done, don’t pass the ball’. It’s perfect.” Ronaldo, “could do absolutely everything,” Guardiola says. “The best Ronaldo ever,” adds Mourinho, a barb which will be felt in Madrid.
Yet the pressure was unrelenting. “I remember we won one game at home 8-0 and the fans whistled, people were not happy,” Guardiola says. “[Robson] arrived in the locker-room and said ‘what are they looking for?’” On January 26 1997, they trounced Rayo Vallecano. “‘Barcelona win 6-0 but play no football’ was one headline,” Robson wrote in one of several memoirs. “It was surreal.”
“In a giant club, Mr Robson was in the middle of politics and football,” Mourinho says. “The people were not against Bobby Robson. People were against [Josep Luis] Nunez [the president].” “It’s not easy to handle Barcelona, especially, especially in that period,” Guardiola says. “I learned when I saw him how lonely the manager feels and, in the bad moments, always with that typical smile.”
The worst and best collided on the same manic March night. After the first leg of their Copa del Rey quarter-final tie, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid were drawing 2-2. By half-time in the Nou Camp, Robson’s team were losing 3-0 and supporters were waving white handkerchieves. He found out later that directors held a meeting to discuss his dismissal. “The volatility of the club was mind-blowing,” he wrote.
“We were absolutely devastated,” Guardiola says. “Bobby said to us to play in the second half for our pride, that we cannot give up until the end.” Robson made two substitutions, taking off Popescu, his captain, and Blanc, and was booed again, but Ronaldo plundered a hat-trick and Barcelona prevailed 5-4, “the most incredible match I’ve been involved in,” according to the manager.
“Crazy night,” Mourinho says. “I still have at home a VHS with this match.” “One of the best nights in our lives,” says Guardiola. Even then, the trauma was not over; press reports claimed the changes had been instigated by players. Guardiola issued a statement saying, “it is simply not true that we rode roughshod over his instructions. Robson is in charge.”
“I know for him it was a tough, tough period,” Guardiola says in the film. “I learned a lot because in that period I was thinking ‘I want to become a manager’. How he handled that situation was incredible. I admire him a lot. It doesn’t matter what the media says, when everybody pushed him, he always tried to be calm.”
Chicanery was ever-present; Robson, who had agonised over an advance from Newcastle, was less than a season into a two-year contract, but Barcelona had long since determined that Louis van Gaal would replace him that summer. “People forget how tough it was for everybody in this year and how he reacted,” Guardiola says. “Even in that moment, he was focussed.” The constant diet of rumour, “didn’t affect him at all,” Mourinho says.
Barca finished second in La Liga, but Robson, “embarrassed the president and his men,” as he put it, claiming the European Cup Winners’ Cup, the Super Cup and, most potent of all, beating Real Betis at the Bernabeu to win the Spanish Cup. “Real Madrid for a Barcelona team is special,” says Guardiola. “With him, I understood how important are relations and communication and the feedback with your players. That season was amazing.”
Robson described it as “a miracle,” and it earned him UEFA’s Coach of the Year award. It gave prominence to Mourinho who, “already had years of experience in football, but never at that level of responsibility. Without feeling his trust, I couldn’t jump so fast to work with the best players in the world.” If Cruyff was Barcelona’s soul and Guardiola his great disciple, then Robson was a model of honour and perseverance.
Guardiola recalls an inquisitive, charismatic man, “like a little boy who discovers something new.” Robson showed Mourinho what humanity meant. “The most dramatic thing for me at the time it was to lose a football match,” he says. “He was saying ‘be happy, because around the corner the other guys are happy’. He was always trying to find a reason to be happy.”
Perhaps that humanity is best expressed in the work of The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, which has raised over £12m for treatment and research into cancer, through the NHS. And More Than a Manager, which is directed by Gabriel Clarke and Torquil Jones, is more than a film, because it, too, will bring money and awareness to a cause which dominated the final months of Sir Bobby’s life. They and those who watch it become part of his “last and greatest team.”
Robson would love that. And he would adore the warm tributes from football people, the respect of Sir Alex Ferguson, the heartrending words from Gascoigne, the spirit which persuades someone who never knew him to run a half-marathon in his name, to host a coffee morning, to push themselves.
“I remember him every day and I tell stories about him,” Mourinho says. “We laugh with the stories, we remember him in the right way. A person only dies when the last person that loves him dies.” In black and white and in colour, in blue and red and garnet, Sir Bobby lives on.
Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager will be shown at select cinemas from May 31 and is available to pre-order as a DVD or digital download at bobbyrobsonfilm.com.
Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola open up about their inspiration in new film Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager
He lived in black and white, from the gloom of Langley Park colliery to the glare of the floodlights and the glorious monochrome of Newcastle United, the club he adored. Sir Bobby Robson’s legacy endures in celluloid memories of Paul Gascoigne’s tears, Maradona’s fist, the flashing boots of Gary Lineker, Ronaldo and Alan Shearer, in the pioneering medical treatment funded by his Foundation. It is there, too, in the red and blue of Manchester.
Robson’s is a story well told, the boyhood visits to St James’ Park, his graft in the village pit, the playing career with Fulham and West Bromwich Albion, managerial sorcery at Ipswich Town, a World Cup semi-final, the craving and curiosity which led him to the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and back home to Tyneside. There were five one-on-ones with cancer, the illness which never defined but finally claimed him.
Gary Lineker hails Robson as the best of all English managers and in terms of length and breadth and success and experience, it is an incomparable record. A new film reflects on how that influence remains current. Among archive footage and emotive interviews, two driven men explain how Robson shaped and guided them.
For all their rivalry, the historic conflict between Manchester City and Manchester United and their grapple for dominance in the Premier League, where they sit first and second, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola share a bond. Both were nurtured by Robson. “Our relationship was phenomenal,” Mourinho says. Guardiola describes him as “special,” and “one of the nicest, nicest persons I’ve met.”
The first hour of Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager builds to a Catalan crescendo and one of the most remarkable, charged seasons in Barcelona’s history. Robson’s career had been ascending to that point — “my destiny,” he wrote — Mourinho was the geeky translator he took with him from Sporting Lisbon and Porto, paying him from his own salary, Guardiola the club’s gilded midfield player.
Appointed in 1996, Robson replaced Johan Cruyff, who had shaped Barcelona’s modern identity, winning La Liga four times in succession. “Cruyff built the cathedral,” Guardiola once said but there had been no trophies for two years, disputes with directors, competing factions. Off the pitch, it was a “political storm,” as Sir Bobby put it, “and I wasn’t a political animal.”
“They were spot on when they chose Mr Robson to be the next one,” Mourinho says in the film. “(But) Barcelona was a really difficult moment, because it was the moment of the conflict between the club and Johan Cruyff.” “It was a tough, tough task,” Guardiola says. “Barcelona was a city divided,” Robson says. “It was my surprise party.”
He inherited fine players; Guardiola, Luis Figo, Hristo Stoichkov, Laurent Blanc, Gheorghe Popescu. To that mix, he added a blistering centre-forward, staking his reputation and a world record $20m on signing Ronaldo, the Brazil international, from PSV Eindhoven.
The transfer was a triumph. There were 47 goals in 49 appearances, one of which, against SD Compostela on October 11, saw the striker run from his own half, evading tackles and dribbling past defenders before scoring. Television cameras cut to Robson clasping his own head in disbelief. “Look at that, Jose. Just look,” he said on the bench. “What a goal!”
“[Ronaldo] was running, running,” Guardiola says. “We said ‘pass the ball’. He don’t pass the ball. Pass the ball. He don’t pass the ball. And after he scored the goal, we said ‘well done, don’t pass the ball’. It’s perfect.” Ronaldo, “could do absolutely everything,” Guardiola says. “The best Ronaldo ever,” adds Mourinho, a barb which will be felt in Madrid.
Yet the pressure was unrelenting. “I remember we won one game at home 8-0 and the fans whistled, people were not happy,” Guardiola says. “[Robson] arrived in the locker-room and said ‘what are they looking for?’” On January 26 1997, they trounced Rayo Vallecano. “‘Barcelona win 6-0 but play no football’ was one headline,” Robson wrote in one of several memoirs. “It was surreal.”
“In a giant club, Mr Robson was in the middle of politics and football,” Mourinho says. “The people were not against Bobby Robson. People were against [Josep Luis] Nunez [the president].” “It’s not easy to handle Barcelona, especially, especially in that period,” Guardiola says. “I learned when I saw him how lonely the manager feels and, in the bad moments, always with that typical smile.”
The worst and best collided on the same manic March night. After the first leg of their Copa del Rey quarter-final tie, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid were drawing 2-2. By half-time in the Nou Camp, Robson’s team were losing 3-0 and supporters were waving white handkerchieves. He found out later that directors held a meeting to discuss his dismissal. “The volatility of the club was mind-blowing,” he wrote.
“We were absolutely devastated,” Guardiola says. “Bobby said to us to play in the second half for our pride, that we cannot give up until the end.” Robson made two substitutions, taking off Popescu, his captain, and Blanc, and was booed again, but Ronaldo plundered a hat-trick and Barcelona prevailed 5-4, “the most incredible match I’ve been involved in,” according to the manager.
“Crazy night,” Mourinho says. “I still have at home a VHS with this match.” “One of the best nights in our lives,” says Guardiola. Even then, the trauma was not over; press reports claimed the changes had been instigated by players. Guardiola issued a statement saying, “it is simply not true that we rode roughshod over his instructions. Robson is in charge.”
“I know for him it was a tough, tough period,” Guardiola says in the film. “I learned a lot because in that period I was thinking ‘I want to become a manager’. How he handled that situation was incredible. I admire him a lot. It doesn’t matter what the media says, when everybody pushed him, he always tried to be calm.”
Chicanery was ever-present; Robson, who had agonised over an advance from Newcastle, was less than a season into a two-year contract, but Barcelona had long since determined that Louis van Gaal would replace him that summer. “People forget how tough it was for everybody in this year and how he reacted,” Guardiola says. “Even in that moment, he was focussed.” The constant diet of rumour, “didn’t affect him at all,” Mourinho says.
Barca finished second in La Liga, but Robson, “embarrassed the president and his men,” as he put it, claiming the European Cup Winners’ Cup, the Super Cup and, most potent of all, beating Real Betis at the Bernabeu to win the Spanish Cup. “Real Madrid for a Barcelona team is special,” says Guardiola. “With him, I understood how important are relations and communication and the feedback with your players. That season was amazing.”
Robson described it as “a miracle,” and it earned him UEFA’s Coach of the Year award. It gave prominence to Mourinho who, “already had years of experience in football, but never at that level of responsibility. Without feeling his trust, I couldn’t jump so fast to work with the best players in the world.” If Cruyff was Barcelona’s soul and Guardiola his great disciple, then Robson was a model of honour and perseverance.
Guardiola recalls an inquisitive, charismatic man, “like a little boy who discovers something new.” Robson showed Mourinho what humanity meant. “The most dramatic thing for me at the time it was to lose a football match,” he says. “He was saying ‘be happy, because around the corner the other guys are happy’. He was always trying to find a reason to be happy.”
Perhaps that humanity is best expressed in the work of The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, which has raised over £12m for treatment and research into cancer, through the NHS. And More Than a Manager, which is directed by Gabriel Clarke and Torquil Jones, is more than a film, because it, too, will bring money and awareness to a cause which dominated the final months of Sir Bobby’s life. They and those who watch it become part of his “last and greatest team.”
Robson would love that. And he would adore the warm tributes from football people, the respect of Sir Alex Ferguson, the heartrending words from Gascoigne, the spirit which persuades someone who never knew him to run a half-marathon in his name, to host a coffee morning, to push themselves.
“I remember him every day and I tell stories about him,” Mourinho says. “We laugh with the stories, we remember him in the right way. A person only dies when the last person that loves him dies.” In black and white and in colour, in blue and red and garnet, Sir Bobby lives on.
Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager will be shown at select cinemas from May 31 and is available to pre-order as a DVD or digital download at bobbyrobsonfilm.com.
