THE SPECIAL ONE, a 2013 book written by Spanish journalist Diego Torres is already regarded by many as a classic in the canon of football literature/investigative journalism.

The book documents Jose Mourinho’s controversial three-year tenure in charge of Real Madrid.

One passage vividly describes the Portuguese coach and Manchester United manager-in-waiting’s growing paranoia at Real.

“The presence of a mole at Real Madrid worried Mourinho so much that between 2011 and 2012 he ordered two sweeps of the hotel where the team stayed to search for hidden microphones. The investigations were unsuccessful. The Sheraton Mirasierra was apparently clean.

“The control of information was another thing that deeply exercised Mourinho; he assigned a group of people to carry out a daily analysis of everything that the media said about him. Every morning Mourinho received a package containing the summary. His day began at 8am in his office at Valdebebas, studying videos, articles and broadcasts. He realised that he and his colleagues were not the only sources of the content, and that certain things that were being published did not exactly project an image of infallibility.

He began to suspect that there were leaks in his organisation. The proximity of the Clásico ramped up his sense of suspicion. According to club sources, the growing fear of leaks made Mourinho ask the directors to set up a study of the phone records of players and club employees. Some players were warned about this informally, as it was in their interest to be careful about whom they spoke to on their mobiles. The secrecy, however, did not prevent the boss’s intentions becoming widely known. In fact they were obvious in every training session.”

The passage goes on to explain that Madrid’s starting XI was allegedly leaked to the Spanish media ahead of a vital game against Barcelona which ended 1-1, harming the side’s title chances in the process.

Afterwards, a distraught, tearful Mourinho confronted his players, calling them “traitors” and “sons of bitches”.

After detailing how he violently hurled a can of Red Bull against the wall, the passage continues: “Squatting on the ground — some say he was kneeling — he rattled off a further series of insults, then, getting up, he wiped the tears from his face and announced that he was going to speak with Pérez (Real’s president) and Sánchez (a director) because they would be able to find the mole. He promised reprisals and also made an analogy between martial law and football: “If I’m in Vietnam and I see you laugh at a mate, I’d grab a gun with my own hands and kill you. Now it’s you yourselves who have to look for the one that leaked the line-up.”

So, with all that in mind, what must Mourinho have thought amid all the Old Trafford-related controversy this week (some of which his representatives were allegedly responsible for)?

After Van Gaal’s sacking became the worst-kept secret in football, an insightful piece written by Daniel Taylor was published on The Guardian’s website at the weekend, highlighting the considerable tension between the coach and his players, and the depths of despondency to which Old Trafford’s gilded stars had sunk as a result of the coach’s idiosyncratic methods.

The piece contained so much detail that it surely could only have been written with the contribution of a dressing room mole — the type of person Mourinho loathes seemingly more than anything else.

And indeed, the Van Gaal anecdotes were not the first instance of someone at Old Trafford seemingly leaking highly unflattering info to the press about an embattled manager.

Back in 2014, following David Moyes’ similarly undignified sacking by the club, there were reports emerging that the rift between the Scottish manager and his squad was so deep that some stars nicknamed him “F*** Off”.

There are a couple of recurring themes emerging here — underperforming players believing they deserve better, footballers airing a manager’s dirty linen to the press even after his sacking and a shabbily treated coach heading for the Old Trafford exit door as a supposed saviour prepares to replace him.

Yet Mourinho, one of the most combustible coaches in the world, who fell out with one of the best goalkeepers ever (Iker Casillas) and one of the best players ever (Cristiano Ronaldo) during his time at Real (and that’s without mentioning how his second Chelsea tenure ended) now faces the unenviable challenge of trying to turn the likes of Marouane Fellaini, Marcos Rojo and Memphis Depay into Premier League title winners, all the while having to keep an eye out for the supposed mole who apparently dished the dirt on Van Gaal and Moyes.

The Red Devils’ perennially dissatisfied players couldn’t endure the relatively mild mannered and inherently decent Moyes, or a strict disciplinarian in Van Gaal, and yet now are expected to co-exist amicably with the beautiful game’s ultimate antagonist?

As Alex Ferguson once remarked: “Football, bloody hell.”

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