Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm, or if your usual copy has stopped arrivingROMANCING THE STONEFlorentino Pérez walked into the Valdebebas training ground canteen and, though he could not see his face,...
Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm, or if your usual copy has stopped arrivingROMANCING THE STONEFlorentino Pérez walked into the Valdebebas training ground canteen and, though he could not see his face, spotted him immediately. How could he not? Even after all these years he was unmistakeable. In a corner of the empty room there he was, sitting at his Special table, his Special back turned to him, his Special fingers toying absentmindedly at his Special coffee cup. Pérez felt the sour rush of tears as he noticed the Real Madrid jacket hanging on the back of his chair. José Mourinho had made no sign that he had heard his club president walk in, at least, no sign to the casual observer. But Pérez knew he knew. The tiniest hunch in the shoulder, the subtlest change in the atmosphere. After three years, you pick up on things others don't."José, I …"It was a scene both men had played over in their minds: the meaning-laden gestures, the pregnant pauses, the cadence of each sentence, the weight of every word. Yet these things never quite work out exactly as planned. Dress rehearsals can't prepare you for the final act. Pérez took an urgent, awkward step towards the manager. His carefully polished shoe bunted the leg of table, which rocked then toppled, and the slap of its plastic frame on the Linoleum echoed through the empty room.As the clatter died away Mourinho, at last, turned, the makings of a smile playing across his face but the pain all too obvious in those Special eyes. Pérez would reflect later than he had never seen the man look so tired – tired to his bones, to his sinews, to the core of his being – but at the time there was just relief, relief that it was started. The end had its beginning."You always were so clumsy, Florentino. It's OK. We both know why we're here. It was fun while it lasted, but …"The next two words, two bullets that would bury their points into the souls of the two men never to be prized out, caught in his throat. Their enormity, their finality, kept them just out of reach, even now. Even here, at the end of things. A clock ticked. A door creaked in some distant, unseen corridor. Noises from another universe, another reality billions of miles away from the here, the now. It was time." … it's over.""Yes, José. It's over."They had expected the words to clang into the empty space, throw painful echoes back. They had expected their ears to ring with the fizzing of their psychological shrapnel. Instead there was silence. Silence and, in each of their hearts, a lightening, a lifting of the load. Mourinho stood now to face the president and Pérez, so shamed by the weakness of his own tears as they had begun to burn their way down his cheeks, saw that the manager too was crying Special tears.Nearly there. It was almost over. Pérez knew that this time it was he who must speak, he who must say the words, he who must send them spinning over this final hurdle. He owed the manager that much."Just one more thing José. I [sob] don't want [blub] to pay the [sniff] £16.9m contract break clause." The effort was too much. Pérez buried his face in his hands and wept, but through the shoulder-juddering spasms the reply rang clearly."And I [sniff] don't want to [sob] pay the [blub] £16.9m contract break clause either."Through the tears it was Pérez's turn to smile, an expression that dominoed its way on to the Special face of the man standing now just a yard away. The irony was not lost on either of them – that here, at their parting, they were as one once more."Then … then let none of us pay. Let that be our gift … our gift to the other."Mourinho nodded, wiped a sleeve across his face, lifted his chin, opened his arms.One last lingering embrace, and through it each tried to say with their arms all the things they could never say with their voices – the good times, the trophies, the thank yous, the goodbyes. They came apart."Go. Go back to them. Go now. Go … and be happy."QUOTE OF THE DAY
