David Runciman

The Euros have always had a couple of advantages over the more grandiose spectacle of the World Cup. First, genuine outsiders do sometimes win the whole thing. It’s happened twice in the last six tournaments. In 1992 the Danish team, who hadn’t qualified for the finals, were summoned off the beach after Yugoslavia had to pull out (shortly before ceasing to exist); they ended up beating the Germans in the final. In 2004 Greece came from more or less nowhere to lift the trophy, defeating home favourites Portugal in both the first match of the tournament and the last. No outsider has ever won a World Cup, unless you count West Germany in 1954 (the so-called ‘Miracle of Bern’). Almost by definition, any sporting contest that has to look to German success to provide evidence of its unpredictability is a fairly closed shop.

As someone who struggles to remember basic facts about my family (middle names, dates of birth), I’m grateful when online security questionnaires give the option of naming the sports team you most want to lose. I know the answer to that one: Manchester United. I have sometimes wondered how much use it is as a security filter. Isn’t almost everyone’s answer to that question Manchester United? Now I face a dilemma. If the question asked me to name my favourite manager I’d also have no trouble supplying an answer: Jose Mourinho. That, I realise, is a more unusual response.

Why did Mourinho get the push? The word is that he lost the dressing-room – too many Chelsea players had clearly grown sick of the sight of him – but there’s something else he’s recently lost as well: his astonishing good looks. Photos in this morning’s papers of Mourinho on the training ground just before his dismissal show a balding, puffy, slightly dishevelled figure. Once agelessly glamorous, he now looks older than his 52 years. When he arrived in English football in 2004 he came trailing not just a reputation for arrogance and achievement but unquestioned sex appeal. He was frankly a lot better looking than any of his players. In such a deeply homoerotic sport, this counts for a lot. The extraordinary hold he had over homely superstars like Frank Lampard and John Terry stemmed in large part from their desire to please their handsome boss: they used to look at him with adoring eyes, just waiting for a hug. Their fondest hope was that some of his stardust would rub off on them. Not any more. Now he looks more like Terry’s grumpy uncle.