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Mind games don't have a rule book. Great managers bring tactical astuteness and man-management chops...and the dark arts of the sport, aka mind games, to the table.
From ruffling the feathers of adversaries with pre-match rhetoric to intimidating the officials and administrators with their verbal tonic, the football managers most adept at mind games have many tricks up their sleeves, with not all of them adhering to sportsman spirit all the time.
Five football managers great at mind games
It is the game you play before the actual game; you could sometimes win the latter if you excel at the former. So without further ado, let us count down five great managers, retired or active, who have been known to be adept at mind games.
#5 Bill Shankly
Billy Shankly turned around the fortunes of Liverpool as their manager during the late 60s and 70s, taking the club back to the First Division and then winningthe league thrice while also achieving success in Europe.
He was also dexterous at mind games, wearing down opposition players and coaches even before kick-off.
Legend has it that Shankly, who in many ways gave birth to the modern Liverpool football club, had once told Bobby Charlton, Manchester United's best player at the time, before a crucial game that he looked very sick and should see a doctor once he gets back to Manchester.
A worried Charlton withdrew from the squad. as a result, to get checked for an imaginary illness. Remember that was the pre-social media and smartphone era.
#4 Roberto Mancini
A great tactician but an even better reader of psychology, Roberto Mancini clearly won the mind games over Sir Alex Ferguson when Manchester City famously snatched the Premier League title from their great rivals, United, on the most dramatic final day in the league's history.
Mancini stressed that the title race was non-existent or over often during the campaign, always insisting that United were the overwhelming favourites. That put the onus and the pressure on the Red Devils, who fell short on goal difference on the final day after Sergio Aguero scored with virtually the last kick of the game against QPR to win the game and the league for the blue half of Manchester.
Roberto Mancini's self-effacing tactics had worked wonders. The decorated manager is still going strong as the gaffer of the Italian national team now.
#3 Pep Guardiola
Not just a purveyor of the beautiful game in its truest sense of the term but also a great practitioner of mind games, Pep Guardiola was famous for his clashes with Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho when the former was at Barcelona. Guardiola once even said that Mourinho deserved his own separate Champions League.
He has gone on in the same vein in England, often taking on Liverpool, questioning their mental toughness and even their players' integrity at times. However, despite winning two league titles on the trot, Guardiola wasn't able to prevent Jurgen Klopp from wresting the crown away from the blus side of Manchester last season.
#2 Alex Ferguson
A legend in the true sense of the term, Sir Alex Ferguson made Manchester United the truly dominant force in the 1990s and took that success into the next century with aplomb as United became the team to beat in the Premier League.
He was, however, also accused of intimidating referees, sometimes calling them unfit, at times, apparently, getting more stoppage time out of them (derisively called 'Fergie time').
Ferguson's opponents did not escape his fire as well. His comments that Liverpool had a much easier run-in during the 2008-09 season ostensibly led to a meltdown by Rafa Benitez's team, and United went on to clinch the title.
Sir Alex Ferguson had employed similar tactics more than a decade ago when Newcastle, like Liverpool, were ahead in the title race before collapsing, with Ferguson similarly intimidating his counterpart Kevin Keegan.
#1 Jose Mourinho
Perhaps the one man associated with the phrase the most in the modern game, Jose Mourinho likes to win and doesn't always care about whether it is done the ugly way. He famously poked Barcelona counterpart Tito Vilanova in the eye during a bust-up while at Real Madrid and employed all the tricks in the book to wrestle the league title away from the Blaugrana successfully.
He has often employed a sour persona and an us-against-the-world narrative wherever he has coached, in the process, managing to get into the head of his rivals.
The self-titled 'special one' is one of the most decorated managers in the game, but Mourinho has often taken on his rivals directly. He once labelled Arsene Wenger 'a specialist in failure'.
Claudio Ranieri was termed 'old and winless' (words that came back to haunt him). He also brought up allegations of match-fixing that Antonio Conte faced while having a feud against the latter.
