His selection of a central midfield trio of Xabi Alonso, Sami Khedira and Pepe and omission of Mesut Ozil was deemed by many to be very negative. It was a team set up to stop Barcelona playing rather than Real Madrid, the home side, stamping their authority on the Catalans.
The criticism was predictable, however. To set up with two defensive midfielders, a very deep playmaker and a full back on the wing just is not the Real Madrid way. It's something of an unwritten rule that to win is not enough, you have to win with style. Proof of this came with their brutal sacking off our very own Fabio Capello. Real won their first trophy, La Liga no less, for four years in the first year of his second spell. This proved insufficient for Real's hard-to-please board of directors as he was dismissed almost immediately after winning the league after they had tired of his counter-attacking football.
Since then, Barcelona have established themselves as a, maybe even the dominant force in world football, understandably to great frustration from Los Blancos. Numerous managers have been and gone since Capello departed. The Chilean, Manuel Pellegrini managed Real to a record breaking points total of 96, unfortunately for him, Barcelona also broke the record last season with 99 and consequently he was relieved of his duties.
So, in theory, even in Real Madrid's best season they still could not do enough to topple their fiercest rivals. Desperation called and Jose Mourinho picked up. The former Barcelona interpretor had just won the treble for Internazionale and left on a high. It was one of football's worst kept secrets that the Spanish capital would be his destination.
En route to the treble, Mourinho masterminded Inter to a memorable victory over Barcelona and he was lauded for his tactics. Real Madrid club president Florentino Perez obviously liked what he saw. Mourinho is a manager whose style is based on getting results, it often isn't pretty, it's usually defensive, but now it was important to knock Barcelona off their perch and if anybody was capable, it was the manager rated by many as the best in the world.
Mourinho's first year at the Santiago Bernabeu has been largely successful but he still finds his team trailing by eight points. Have they receded since last season? Probably not, but they still do not look like a serious threat to Barcelona's dominance. In Mourinho's first Clasico, he saw his side dismantled in a 5-0 defeat, in arguably the best ever Clasico performance by Barca.
The negative tactics are unnecessary against the rest of La Liga but Barcelona are a different prospect. They keep possession like no other team can, so ball winners were needed, hence the inclusion in the second and third derbies of the season of Pepe and Khedira. This approach has brought them much more success after Mourinho learned an excruciatingly harsh and humiliating lesson at the Camp Nou.
The critics of this system have become more vocal over the last week, but Real Madrid must have known what they were getting themselves into. Mourinho has made a career of building his teams on a solid defensive base, so why would he change that mantra now? It has brought him huge success in three different countries.
Florentino Perez has even loosened his grip on the club's transfer policy, allowing Mourinho to buy the players he wants for the team. So, unlike Capello, Pellegrini and all the others, Mourinho seems to have the club's full backing. Perhaps, unsurprisingly if the reputed figure of £6million per season in wages is true, but the striking detail is that the negative tactics are tolerated as Real Madrid's desperation to regain their crown as the number one team in Spain and the world becomes ever more evident.
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