Champions: Mourinho and the management of decadence | Champions League 2019

Tottenham, a shadow of the team that was a runner-up in Europe a few months ago, is playing its future in the Champions League in Leipzig with the need to go back 0-1 in the first leg.

Saba Jos Mourinho When he accepted the job, the challenge that the Tottenham It was very different from the ones he had faced during his last two decades of career. For the first time since 2002, the award-winning Portuguese coach takes a bench with the season already started, with no room for maneuver to build a team to suit him. Quite the contrary, what was found in London It was an exhausted and declining project, which this Tuesday has many ballots to be expelled from the Champions in the round of 16. Rarely in football has a decomposition been seen as fast and evident as that suffered by this Tottenham that a few months ago played (and lost) the final of the European Cup against the Liverpool.

Of the 11 footballers that were holders that day in the Metropolitan, three are no longer, the two forwards (Kane and Son) are long-term injured and almost everyone else is a shadow of what they were. And Pochettino, of course, is no longer, washed away by the tide in autumn. Between the signings, Lo Celso is offering a good level, but Sessegnon and Ndombel are very far from what Tottenham expected from them. Young people Bergwijn and GedsonFor their part, they have arrived in January and are still in the process of adaptation.

Something has broken at Tottenham and Mourinho has not yet found a way to fix it. Although, in reality, everything was already cracked before he arrived. Trippier has transferred to the Atlantic and his substitute, Aurier, is at a much lower level than his. Alderweireld, Eriksen and Rose They also tried to leave, although in the end they stayed. The Belgian is still on the roster, while the other two left in January before their contracts expired. Lloris and Vertonghen They are no longer what they were and Sissoko is proving what she already feels, that her level last season had been an anomaly. Players like Dier, Winks, Davies and Davinson Snchez are no more than complementary players, without the footballing ability to make a quality leap for the team.

Although the great problem of this Tottenham is in attack. It is not that his forwards are bad, it is that he has almost no. Llorente, decisive in the last Champions League, came out in the summer with the letter of freedom and nobody replaced him. The club tried it in January with Willian Jos, but did not create his incorporation or any other. With Kane and Son's injuries, Lucas Moura he is the closest thing to an attacker left to Mourinho. In recent weeks he is improvising with Dele Alli, whose dramatic drop in level is the perfect summary of the crisis that Tottenham is dragging. And in England, it is already rumored that Kane, the team's only capitalized star, is considering applying for the transfer at the end of the season.

This Tuesday, in front of RB LeipzigWithout Kane, Son and Bergwijn, the 'spur' ensemble can put an end to their attempt to repeat the feat of the past year. Go to Red Bull Arena with the need to overcome the 0-1 achieved by the Germans in London to access the quarterfinals. And his arguments for such a mission, written remains, are few and nothing flattery. As if all this were not enough, he has three defeats and two draws in his last five games, results that have left him out of the FA Cup and that move him, already eighth in the Premier, from the positions of the Champions. The fourth, Chelsea, is seven points away right now. And although the sanction on Manchester City is confirmed and the fifth of the Premier will keep his place, Tottenham does not emit feelings of being able to face that fight. Urgent one reconstruction and in London he already plans the question: Is Mourinho the right coach to carry it out?