Mourinho and Real Madrid: The LaLiga marathon rhythm and the strength that never shows on the scoreboard

I still remember that afternoon — a November afternoon in Busan, when the sea winds swept down the Haeundae district and I sat in a small café near the harbor, earphones plugged into my phone, replaying the audio of a press conference a colleague in Madrid had just sent me. On the small screen, José Mourinho stood before the microphones. He did not smile. He did not wave his arms. He simply stood there, with the face of a man who has been through too many battles to still believe in flowery words, and spoke about Real Madrid.

What made me pause was not tactics. There was no formation drawn on any board. No expected-goals figure was mentioned. Mourinho only spoke about "the strength of a group" — and about LaLiga as a marathon. I have heard that phrase many times in my more than twenty years in this profession. But this time, it made me open my second notebook and write a short line: "This is a story about rhythm, not about goals."

There are no spectators in the stands, yet I still hear the pulse of the match. And the rhythm Mourinho was trying to beat into the listener's ear was not the rhythm of a single derby, but the rhythm of an entire nine-month season.

The context of this story is fairly clear to anyone following LaLiga. Mourinho, the Portuguese coach who once led Real Madrid between 2026 and 2026, appeared at a press conference ahead of the Madrid derby between Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid. He no longer sits in the manager's chair of the white club, but his name still carries special weight in the Spanish capital. He spoke about his former club with a rare respect, and what he emphasized was not the individual quality of any star, but the strength of the collective.

"This team, beyond the quality it has, has a strength that for me has a very great meaning — the strength of a group," Mourinho said. He asserted that Real Madrid would remain in the LaLiga title race until the final matchdays. He noted that the Spanish championship should be understood as a long-distance race, that it is not always a highway without obstacles — but this team would be there at the finish line.

For a quiet observer like me, that was a statement worth recording. Not because it was new. But because it landed exactly on the way football operates across long seasons.

A LaLiga season lasts 38 matchdays. A team that wants to be champion must play well across roughly nine months, through away trips in the Basque Country, through cold nights in the north, through tired flights between European cup matches, and through weeks when the players' bodies ache so much that no one wants to talk. In that context, individual quality can win a match, but only a collective can win a season.

The collective strength Mourinho speaks of is a category that cannot be measured by any index, cannot be converted into transfer money, and cannot be found in any statistical table. It lives in the dressing room, at the shared meal after a match, in the way a substitute stands up to applaud a teammate who replaces him in the 85th minute.

I learned this long ago, from the seasons when I followed Busan IPark in K League 2. Not a single player on that team was a superstar. No one had a transfer value high enough to appear in any international ranking. But they ran together. They defended together. They cried together when they lost in the promotion play-off. And that season, they finished third, exactly four points short of promotion.

Four points. Across 36 matches. That is a gap no expected-goals metric could ever explain. I stayed behind in the press room after the final round, watching the players walk down the corridor with red eyes, and I understood that what they lacked was not talent. What they lacked was a bit of luck, and a bit of rhythm at exactly the right moment.

Busan is not the stage lights, but it taught me how to keep rhythm.

From Busan, I looked toward Madrid and saw the same story unfolding at a different scale. Real Madrid does not lack talent. They have players every club in the world would want. But what Mourinho emphasized was not talent. It was the ability to maintain stability across a long season.

There is an old principle in football that everyone who has worked long in the game knows: the champion is not the team that plays best in one match, but the team that plays best in its worst matches. When nothing goes as planned, when the players' legs are heavy, when referees give contentious penalties, when the away stadium is so loud that no one can hear the coach — that is when the strength of a collective keeps the ship from sinking.

Mourinho knows this better than anyone. He once won LaLiga with Real Madrid in the 2026–2026 season, a campaign in which his team reached 100 points, a record that still stands in Spain. But reaching those 100 points was not only about nights of brilliance. There were matches Real Madrid had to win with a single goal in the 88th minute, with a counterattack from the tired legs of a young player coming off the bench.

Those are the moments that do not appear in highlight reels. Those are the moments only those who sit long enough in the stands can see.

There are things that never show on the scoreboard, yet they decide everything.

When Mourinho spoke of a "marathon", he was using a metaphor anyone who has run long distance understands. A marathon is not decided in the first kilometer. It is decided at the thirtieth, when the body begins to protest, when the mind begins to doubt, when everyone around you begins to slow. The winner is the one who knows how to distribute energy, when to hydrate, when to accelerate and when to hold the pace.

LaLiga is the same. The champion is not the team that runs fastest in the first half of the season. It is the team that knows how to save strength for the second half.

What does that mean in practice? It means the champion needs a squad deep enough to rotate. It means that team needs a medical department good enough to keep its pillars from breaking during the final stretch. And it means that team needs a psychological system solid enough not to collapse after losing a match everyone thought it had to win.

Mourinho mentioned "obstacles on the track". That is a diplomatic way of putting it. In football, obstacles can be injuries. They can be a congested calendar. They can be public criticism after a few poor matches. They can be a contentious VAR decision no one can satisfactorily explain.

On VAR, I have had many occasions to observe and I still hold my old view. Technology that assists referees does not reduce controversy. It only moves controversy from the pitch into a closed room, where the grey zones of the law become the focal point. When experts must debate whether the ball touched a hand or a shoulder in a 25-second slow-motion frame, we are not solving a problem. We are expanding the grey area of the rules into an endless argument.

And in a marathon season, such arguments can become real obstacles. They erode player psychology, distract the coaching staff, and can change the outcome of important matches. A team that wants to be champion does not only need technical excellence. It needs the ability to endure.

In more than twenty years of watching football, I have noticed that champion teams tend to share one quality rarely discussed: they win matches they did not deserve to win. That is not mere luck. It is the result of a collective so used to covering for one another that when one man makes a mistake, another automatically rises to shield him.

This is exactly what Mourinho is hinting at when he talks about Real Madrid's collective strength. He is not saying this team has the best players in the world. He is not saying their current coach has the best tactics in Europe. He is only saying this team has an inner collective force, and that means a great deal to him.

But let us try to dissect that statement further. Collective strength is not an abstract quality that simply exists. It is the result of a long building process. It begins in small training sessions, where players learn to call each other's names on the pitch. It continues on long flights, where players are forced to sit beside each other for hours. And it is completed in difficult matches, where only mutual trust helps them survive pressure.

I once witnessed such a moment at the 2026 World Cup, when South Korea beat Germany 2-0 in Kazan. It was a match no one believed South Korea could win. But when Kim Young-gwon scored in the 90th+3 minute, the whole team did not jump up to celebrate immediately. They looked at each other. They touched each other's shoulders. They slowly walked toward the stands, as if together confirming that this miracle was real.

After the match, I was in the mixed zone and heard a sentence I have carried with me ever since. The head coach of the South Korean national team at the time said: "We won because the players trust each other."

No stat can measure trust. But it decides everything.

Returning from Russia, I flew straight to Jakarta to follow Coach Park Hang-seo and the Vietnam U23 team for two weeks. I wanted to understand whether a defensive philosophy built on the collective could translate across football cultures. During those two weeks, I recorded every training session. I watched how Park used a three-defender, four-midfielder system and constantly varied it depending on the opponent. But what I remember most is not the tactical drills. It is the way the young Vietnamese players looked at Park when he talked to them. In their eyes was something I cannot name, but I knew it was trust.

From Busan to the World Cup, I learned that football does not lie.

And football does not lie about one thing: champion teams are not the ones with the most stars. They are the ones with a collective that speaks the same language.

When Mourinho talks about Real Madrid, I think he is talking about exactly this. Not about blockbuster signings. Not about record contracts. But about a collective built long enough to understand each other without speaking.

But here we must be careful. Collective strength is a precious weapon. Yet it can also be misused as a media mantra. And that is the counter-intuitive angle I want to spend time analyzing.

When a famous coach — especially a coach with a strong personality like Mourinho — publicly praises a team's collective strength, we must ask ourselves: does that mean the team is truly strong, or is it facing individual problems and needs shielding?

There is a logic in professional football few people articulate. When a team has many individual stars, media pressure usually lands on those stars. If the team plays well, credit goes to them. If the team plays poorly, blame also falls on them. In that context, emphasizing collective strength can be a way to reduce pressure on individuals while reminding the whole team that success belongs to no one alone.

This is a smart media strategy. But it may also be a sign that the team lacks individuals capable of creating the unexpected, and must rely on the collective to compensate.

I do not have enough data to assert this about Real Madrid. I only have one press conference and a few sentences. But I have been in this profession long enough to know that sometimes the most eloquent statements hide the deepest problems.

When Mourinho speaks of "obstacles" on the racing road, he is implicitly acknowledging this race is not easy. But he does not specify what those obstacles are. They may be injuries. They may be the calendar. They may be internal issues he knows about but cannot state.

And here is the crux I want to emphasize: optimism declared in public is not proof of real strength. Sometimes it is merely a way to stay calm in a situation whose outcome the speaker himself is not sure of.

Over many years in this trade, I have learned that statements like "we will be there until the end" tend to be made when the team is not in an advantageous position. If a team leads the table with a safe margin, no one needs to stress that they will stay in the race. Having to assert it, in a way, is a sign they feel pressure from behind.

This does not mean Mourinho is lying. On the contrary, I believe he is showing respect for his former club by sending a positive message. But as an observer, I cannot only read the beautiful sentences and ignore what is not said.

Look at what Mourinho did not say. He did not discuss specific tactics. He did not name a single player. He did not mention the club's other fronts, like the Champions League or the Copa del Rey. He only spoke about LaLiga and the collective. What does that mean?

It may simply be that Mourinho wanted to send a message of support to his former club before an important derby. That is a normal act for someone who once had a bond with the club. But it could also be that behind that simplicity lies deep understanding of the club's current situation that only insiders know.

Mourinho is extremely intelligent in media communication. He knows exactly what to say and when to stay silent. Every statement of his can therefore be read on multiple levels.

On the surface, he is expressing trust in Real Madrid. Deeper, he is reminding us that the LaLiga race is a long battle, and teams that want to be champion need more than individual talent. Deepest of all, he may be sending a message to the coaching staff and players themselves that they must focus on building a strong collective, rather than relying on a few individuals.

There is a story I once heard about Mourinho during his Real Madrid years. He was said to have hung a board in the dressing room reading, in essence: "No one is bigger than the club." Later, when players asked why no one's name was on the board, he replied that each name would appear when they understood the meaning of that sentence.

Whether that story is true or not, it reflects a philosophy Mourinho pursued throughout his career: the collective above all. And when he looks at the current Real Madrid, he sees a team that, in his view, has acquired that strength.

But is that enough to win LaLiga? The answer is uncertain. Football is a sport where the immeasurable sometimes matters more than the measurable. Collective strength can help a team survive difficult periods. But it cannot replace individual talent in decisive moments.

Recall recent LaLiga seasons. Barcelona won through a systematically built tactical system. Atlético Madrid won through an uncompromising fighting spirit. Real Madrid won through a combination of individual talent and collective resolve. There is no single formula for success. Every champion wins in its own way.

What matters is not whether a team has collective strength. What matters is whether it can sustain that strength across a long season.

And this is where I want to discuss the aspect I consider most important in this story: stability.

In a marathon, the winner is not the fastest at any given moment. The winner is the one who maintains a steady pace across the whole course. This means the LaLiga champion does not need to win every match. It only needs to collect more points than the others after 38 matchdays.

But to do that, it must minimize unnecessary defeats. It must win the matches it is favored to win. It must take at least a point from difficult matches. And it must keep its focus during periods when everything seems to be going smoothly.

Stability is not a natural quality. It is a skill forged over time. It requires a coaching staff that knows how to rotate the squad, a medical department that knows how to keep players healthy, and a leadership that knows how to create a positive working environment. It also requires luck — but luck only comes to those already prepared to receive it.

My Busan IPark story is an example. We were exactly four points short of promotion. Four points across 36 matches. That is a gap that could have been closed with two more wins. But we dropped those points in matches we should have won. We failed to keep our stability when it mattered.

I remember a training session in July, when coach Kim Do-hoon stood in the middle of the pitch and told the players about the importance of patience. He said a season is not decided in one week, but by how we respond to poor results. He said the team that knows how to endure will be the team that goes farthest.

We did not go as far as we wanted. But that lesson has stayed with me throughout my career.

There is one more thing I want to mention, and it concerns the human side of football. In a marathon season, players do not only battle opponents on the pitch. They battle themselves. They battle fatigue, public pressure, the fear of being replaced, and personal problems no one sometimes knows about.

I once saw a Busan IPark player take the field in an important match just days after his mother passed away. He came on from the bench in the 60th minute, ran as if it were the last match of his life, and assisted the winning goal in the 82nd. After the match, he sat alone in the dressing room for a long time. I did not dare ask him anything. I only wrote in my notebook: "This is why football is never just a game."

There are things that never show on the scoreboard, yet they decide everything.

When Mourinho speaks of collective strength, I think he is also speaking of moments like this. Moments when a player does not play for a contract, does not play for a bonus, but plays for his teammates. Moments when the collective becomes something greater than the sum of its individuals.

That is something no algorithm can simulate. No data model can predict. And no league table can reflect.

In modern football, where data increasingly governs every decision, there is a risk that we forget the immeasurable. Expected-goals metrics are used to assess the quality of chances. But they cannot measure a player's resolve when he knows the whole team is counting on him.

Possession metrics are used to assess control of a match. But they cannot measure the trust a defender places in the goalkeeper behind him.

Running metrics are used to assess a player's effort. But they cannot measure the will of a man whose legs are exhausted yet who keeps running.

I say this not to deny the value of data. I believe data has an important role in modern football. But I also believe there are things data can never replace. And collective strength is one of them.

When Mourinho speaks of Real Madrid, he is speaking of something only those who have been inside a sporting collective can understand. It is the feeling of knowing that if you make a mistake, someone will rise to cover for you. The feeling of knowing you are not alone on the pitch. The feeling of knowing that whatever the outcome, you have a group of people ready to share it with you.

That feeling cannot be bought with money. It cannot be created in a day. It can only be built over time, through shared experiences, through defeats and victories together.

And when a coach like Mourinho — who has led the biggest clubs in Europe and seen everything football can offer — says collective strength means a great deal to him, we should listen.

But we should also remember that every team has its own rhythm. Every player has his own rhythm. And the task of an observer is not to impose his rhythm on the team, but to understand where their rhythm is heading.

When I sat in Busan replaying Mourinho's press conference audio, I was not trying to find a prediction for the LaLiga race. I was only trying to understand the rhythm this team is running to.

And what I realized is that this rhythm is not decided by the big matches. It is decided by the small ones — the matches no one notices, the matches only stadium spectators and chroniclers like me sitting in a corner of the pitch see.

There are no spectators in the stands, yet I still hear the pulse of the match.

And the pulse I hear from Madrid, when Mourinho speaks of collective strength, is the pulse of a team trying to maintain stability in a long race. It is not the pulse of excitement or moments of brilliance. It is the pulse of patience.

In a 38-matchday LaLiga season, patience may be the most precious weapon a team can have.

I do not know whether Real Madrid will win the title this season. No one knows in advance. But I know that if they do, it will not be because they have the best players. It will not be because they have the best coach. It will be because they have a collective that knows how to keep rhythm throughout a long race.

And if they fail, it will not be because they lack talent. It will be because they lost the rhythm at some point — a point perhaps none of us saw, except those sitting in the corner of the pitch, recording every detail.

That is my job. Not to predict outcomes. But to record the rhythm. So that when the season ends, we can look back and understand why everything happened as it did.

The 2026 season taught me that silence is also a way of cheering.

When the stadiums stood empty during the pandemic, the players still had to play. They still had to run, still had to contest the ball, still had to score. But they had no one to share those moments with. They played in silence, and it was precisely in that silence that I realized football's rhythm does not come from the stands. It comes from inside the pitch, from the way players move together, from the way they talk to each other with their eyes.

That is what Mourinho is talking about. The strength of a collective does not depend on the spectators. It depends on the members of the collective itself.

I often think of Vietnam when I write these lines. Vietnamese football has spent decades searching for a stable rhythm. There were moments when we seemed to have found it, only to lose it again in the cycles of coaching changes, oversized expectations, and prolonged disappointments.

But in recent years, I have seen a change. I see a generation of young players learning to play football together, not just for themselves. I see a football nation trying to build a collective, instead of only hunting for individual stars.

That is a new rhythm. And I hope it will be maintained.

A Korean man crying for Vietnamese football. That is the shared rhythm.

I witnessed it in Busan, in a small restaurant near the city center, when the Vietnam national team played in a regional tournament. The owner — a Korean man in his sixties — sat watching the match with me and burst into tears when Vietnam scored the decisive goal. He does not speak Vietnamese. He has no connection to Vietnam except a single trip to Hanoi on business. But he cried.

That is football. It crosses borders. It crosses languages. It touches emotions we do not expect.

And that too is what Mourinho is talking about when he speaks of collective strength. It is not only the strength of a team. It is the strength of a community. Of a city. Of a country. Of everyone who believes in the same thing.

When Real Madrid takes the field at the Santiago Bernabéu, there are not only eleven players on the pitch. There are tens of thousands in the stands and millions around the world walking with them. All of them running the same marathon.

And that is why the story of collective strength matters. Not because it helps the team score more goals. But because it connects the team with those who believe in it.

In modern football, when money and data govern every decision, that connection may be the most precious asset a team can have.

I think about what Mourinho said when he used the word "marathon". He is telling us this race will be long. There will be obstacles. There will be difficult moments. But if the team keeps its rhythm, if it keeps its collective strength, it will be there at the finish line.

That is not a promise. It is a statement of belief.

And in football, belief can be a very powerful thing. It can help a team surpass its own limits. It can turn the impossible into the possible. It can create moments we will remember forever.

But belief also needs to be nurtured by action. It needs to be proven by results. It needs to be sustained by stability.

So, as the season continues and the important matchdays approach, we will get the answer to whether Real Madrid's collective strength is enough to carry them to the LaLiga title. We will see how this team responds when it hits an obstacle. We will see how it keeps rhythm in the hardest moments.

And when we see those things, we will understand more clearly the story Mourinho began.

For me, a man sitting in Busan recording every detail, that is the most fascinating thing about football. Not the final result. But the rhythm that leads to it.

Because rhythm never lies. It only waits to be heard.

And when the LaLiga season enters its final matchdays, I will still be here, in Busan, with my notebook open on the table, recording every rhythm of the race. I will not predict who wins. I will only record how they get there.

Because football, in the end, is a story about people. And stories about people are never decided by numbers. They are decided by pulses — pulses only those sitting in the corner of the pitch sometimes hear.

There are no spectators in the stands, yet I still hear the pulse of the match.