'The Beautiful Game' is back: Jose Mourinho and his anti-football are slowly being shown up

This is nothing new, of course. Since football's very inception, spoiling tactics have been employed against the greatest exponents of 'The Beautiful Game' (see Pele's Brazil being literally kicked out of the 1966 World Cup). It's nearly 50 years since Danny Blanchflower famously stated, "The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot - not waiting for them to die of boredom." And yet those words still resonate today.

Granted, much has been done in the modern era to improve the game as a spectacle. For those unfortunate enough to remember Italia 90, just think of how far we've come since then. The tournament was so dour, so defensive, that FIFA literally had to change the rules in the years that followed, outlawing the back-pass rule to alleviate the tedium caused by the ultimate 'out-ball', and clamping down on challenges from behind in order to protect flair players.

As Motta pointed out, though, it's high time that similarly drastic action was taken to eradicate time-wasting and simulation, which remain important tools for the most pathetic practitioners of anti-football.

It is often argued that there is no right way to play football - but there is most definitely a wrong way. While previewing last season's Champions League final,CBS pundit Jamie Carragher said while he wasn't advocating that Inter use "the dark arts" in Istanbul, he did feel that it might be their only chance of sufficiently upsetting Manchester City to put them off their game.

In the end, of course, Inter didn't need to resort to such gamesmanship. They carried out Simone Inzaghi's disciplined game-plan to near perfection, nullifying the threat posed by Erling Haaland & Co. until Rodri, of all people, broke the deadlock after being teed up by a fortuitous deflection. Thereafter, Inter dominated and would have deservedly forced extra-time - and maybe even won the game - had it not been for their misfiring forwards.

Consequently, the Nerazzurri received plenty of praise for their performance - and rightly so, because there was certainly no shame in applying a counter-attacking approach against such an overwhelming underdog. What is unforgivable, though, is an elite club or coach having negativity as their default setting.

When Napoli played Juventus midway through last season, long before a first Scudetto in 33 years became a formality, Luciano Spalletti pointed out the game at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona represented a classic contrast of styles, "two different philosophies" that epitomised the struggle between the purists and the pragmatists for control of the term 'good football'.

For Massimiliano Allegri, 'good football' is winning football. Aesthetic considerations simply don't enter into the equation. In that sense, he is the perfect coach for the grand Old Lady of the Italian game. As Spalletti said, "Allegri espouses the Juventus' motto: 'Winning is the only thing that matters.'

"However, here, in Naples, it's all heart and soul. There was Maradona, the people saw him play, and when he won, he showed them how much beauty there is in football and we can't help but take some of that beauty with us and remember that football, hoping to reproduce it."

And they realised that objective, that dream, in the most glorious possible fashion, by not only winning the Serie A title but doing so with a brand of football that made them revered around the world. Despite losing one club legend after another last summer and replacing them with bargain buys, Spalletti managed to remind everyone that it is still possible for smaller clubs to both win - and entertain - on the most uneven of economic playing fields. And he wasn't alone in that regard.

In the Premier League, Roberto De Zerbi was met with the same kind of scepticism that Arsene Wenger encountered in England more than 25 years ago, and yet led Brighton into UEFA competition for the first time in the club's history - and with a sublime style of play that even had Pep Guardiola purring.

De Zerbi reportedly declined the chance to speak seriously to Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis about succeeding Spalletti as coach at the Maradona because he sincerely believes that he can get Brighton into the Champions League. And why shouldn't he?

The Seagulls have already lost Alexis Mac Allister this summer and Moises Caicedo could follow his fellow South American out the door at the Amex, but given they boast an excellent team and an outstanding coach, Brighton really could prove England's answer to Atalanta, who qualified for the Champions League for three years in a row under Gian Piero Gasperini, even reaching the quarter-finals in 2020.

It was the Bergamaschi, remember, who helped put Andrea Agnelli's nose so out of joint that he redoubled his efforts to introduce a Super League. Atalanta provided proof that even a provincial club could beat the big boys if they recruited sensibly and had a clearly defined footballing philosophy.

Just as the likes of Spalletti, De Zerbi, Freiburg's Christian Streich and Union Berlin's Urs Fischer are dismantling the idea that the only way to compete in this money-saturated modern era is to play defensive, counter-attacking football.

Obviously, financial might is utterly integral to sustained success. City's treble triumph is testament to that fact. But hope springs eternal and, at Arsenal last season, there was a torrent of optimism as Mikel Arteta's exciting young side did something that many considered impossible, by making the Premier League look like a competitive championship for eight months.

In the end, of course, City prevailed, as expected. They are, after all, a state-sponsored club: money is no object to them, and financial fair play no obstacle. And yet many people accused Arsenal of bottling the league, including some of their most high-profile supporters, and that leads to the crux of the matter, the principle problem with the 'winning is the only thing that counts' mentality.

It is now all-encompassing, it has pervaded every aspect of the game, annihilating fair play and distorting the very meaning of what it is to compete. Anything other than trophy triumphs, all other results, all other outcomes, have been rendered irrelevant. Context used to be key, now it is inconsequential. Because if only victory constitutes success, then defeat is failure.

But try tell that to the Arsenal fans who were at the Emirates when Reiss Nelson hit that 97th-minute winner against Bournemouth - or the Dortmund supporters who saw cancer survivor Sebastien Haller score twice at Augsburg to put Edin Terzic's side one win away from the title. Those moments haven't been subsequently stripped of meaning.

BVB undeniably blew the Bundesliga on the final day. They admitted that themselves after being held at home by Mainz. And yet the most memorable moment of the title race was not Jamal Musiala winning an 11th consecutive Bundesliga for Bayern Munich, it was more than 25,000 people on The Yellow Wall consoling a tearful Terzic with the words, "If you win and stand top, or if you lose and stand at the bottom, we'll still sing: Borussia, BVB!"

It was a spine-tingling show of unity - and dignity, the epitome of magnanimity in defeat. There was no bitterness, no recrimination, no sign of the kind of tribalism that marred the Europa League final, which culminated in Roma fans insulting match referee Anthony Taylor in front of his family - less than 24 hours after Jose Mourinho had waited around in the carpark after the game in Budapest to insult the officials.

As he has done at so many of his previous posts, the Portuguese has built a special bond with the Giallorossi faithful, taking on an almost messiah-like status, with supporters hanging on his every word and blindly following him into very dark places.

His conspiracy theories are enthusiastically embraced and any criticism of his conduct vociferously defended. The same goes for his coaching staff and his players, who, over the past two years, have come to embody a kind of cynicism that has seen them become one of the most reviled squads not only in Serie A, but also Europe.

With Mourinho, it's not just about the negative, defensive football; there's also the far more troubling toxicity that comes with his 'the ends justifies the means' approach to every aspect of the game.

When Roma faced Feyenoord in this season's Europa League, Arne Slot said that while Mourinho's methods "achieve results", he preferred watching Napoli. So, after Slot refused to shake hands after the second leg - the umpteenth game involving Roma this season blighted by incessant harassment of the referees, simulation and time-wasting - Mourinho ran after the Dutchman, sarcastically shouting at him, "Go watch Napoli now!"

Mourinho also ranted about respect, which was both ironic and unsurprising, because he feels his achievements do not get the widespread credit he feels they deserve. The thing is, though, there is a lot of respect for Mourinho's trophy haul - just very little love for his football, and that's what riles him, and always has riled him. Just look at all the petty snipes about 'serial losers' and 'zeru tituli'.

Perhaps because he had to fight so hard to prove himself so much more than an 'interpreter', Mourinho is preoccupied solely with winning. His only concern is the result; not the game, as perhaps underlined by the fact that in his mind the perfect match would end scoreless. To him, Allegri and many others just like them, the game is there to be won, when, in reality, it is there to be enjoyed.

And that is the fundamental truth at the heart of the game that is in danger of being distorted by the lie that there is no wrong way to play football. There absolutely is. Any approach that strips the joy out of the game and replaces it with nothing but cynicism should be called out for exactly what it is: anti-football.

Because it represents a clear and present danger to the continued growth and popularity of the game. The old No.10 role has already disappeared, while there is ever-decreasing room for ballers like Ronaldinho, and any kid will tell you that they'd rather play with the ball than without it. That's not to denigrate the importance of work-rate or defensive diligence. Those remain core values of the sport, without which victory - or indeed pride in one's performance - would be impossible.

But for all of the mistakes Agnelli and Florentino Perez made before, during and after the launch of their ill-fated European Super League, they were right about one thing: football is only going to find it tougher to retain the interest of audiences with social media having already seriously shortened attention spans across the board.

There is no need for the introduction of ridiculous rule changes for the Tik-Tok generation - the game has always been about moments anyway, the kind of magical moments that make all of the suffering worthwhile. There should not be any attempt to make the art of defending even tougher than it has already become either. Its a dying art as it is.

But something has to be done that the spoiling tactics that are ruining the spectacle, because very few fans want to watch a match where the ball is only in play for roughly half of the 90 minutes, and the rest of the match is made up of simulation, time-wasting and touchline tantrums.

There is no glory in winning by any means necessary. Or when money makes victory inevitable. For that very reason, we should be immensely grateful to Napoli, Brighton, Dortmund and others for doing Blanchflower proud this season.

However, Motta is most definitely right when he says that, right now, it feels as if the authorities are still making it easier for those that want to destroy football - than those that just want to play it.