The bad luck of the draw

José Mourinho is on the verge of achieving something so absurd and statistically ridiculous it might even leave him speechless for the first time in his long career.

The self-proclaimed Special One is just two matches away from guiding Benfica through an entire league season unbeaten, which is a pretty amazing achievement by anyone’s standards.

If the legendary manager navigates the final 180 minutes of the season without tasting defeat – possibly with a little tactical bus parking – he will become a member of the exclusive ‘invincible’ club.

But here is where the story takes an interesting twist, because even if José does pull off this remarkable feat, Benfica still won’t win the Portuguese title.

Nope, FC Porto secured that particular honour last weekend when they moved nine points clear of their bitter rivals with just the two games to go; which, when you stop and think about it for a second, is completely bonkers.

An unbeaten season is supposed to be football’s ultimate mic drop. The sort of achievement that guarantees statues outside stadiums, teary-eyed documentaries and endless debates about whether you have just witnessed one of the greatest teams of all time.

Instead, Benfica are about to become one of football’s strangest pub quiz answers. A side that couldn’t lose but still failed to win.

And the reason for this bizarre situation is wonderfully simple – too many draws. Ten of them, to be exact. Which means that while Mourinho’s side were masters at avoiding defeat, Porto were masters at doing the thing that actually matters most in title races: winning football matches.

It is almost painfully Mourinho when you think about it.

Throughout his managerial career José has treated risk in the same way most people treat an unexploded bomb. His teams are built on control, structure, and the idea that if you never leave the back door open, eventually the opposition will make a mistake first.

Usually that approach works spectacularly well because Mourinho teams tend to combine defensive discipline with enough ruthless efficiency to grind out titles almost by accident. This Benfica side, however, seems to have become so obsessed with not losing that somewhere along the line they forgot that victories are worth three times as much as draws.

The truly bizarre part is that Benfica fans have actually lived through this madness before. Back in 1978 they also managed to go unbeaten in the league and still somehow finished second. And, just to make the whole thing feel even more like some sort of cursed footballing time loop, the club who beat them to the title on that occasion? Porto.

You genuinely could not make it up.

And yet there is also something undeniably impressive about it all. Going through a full league campaign unbeaten is extraordinarily difficult no matter how you dress it up. One bad refereeing decision, one freak own goal, one off day away from home in the middle of winter and the whole thing disappears. Even the great sides tend to stumble somewhere along the road. Mourinho’s Benfica simply refused to.

Which leaves history with a very strange dilemma when it comes to judging this team. They are not champions. But they are certainly not failures either. They exist in that weird little space between glory and frustration where nobody quite knows whether to applaud politely or burst out laughing.

And perhaps that is the most Mourinho thing imaginable. Even when the man achieves greatness, he still somehow manages to do it in the most argumentative and gloriously awkward way possible.

Benfica become so obsessed with not losing they forgot that victories are worth three times as much as draws

Hair we go again

Football needs to have a quiet word with itself about this whole hair-pulling situation before it gets completely out of hand.

If a player is charging down the wing and a defender grabs a handful of hair like a man trying to stop a runaway horse, fine. Foul, card, no complaints.

But we are drifting into a world where any contact with hair, however accidental, is treated like a full-blown assault. That is where it starts to get silly.

This is still a contact sport. Arms go up, players jostle, hands brush shoulders, backs, and occasionally, yes, hair. That does not automatically mean someone has committed a crime worthy of a free kick, a booking and a slow-motion VAR montage.

The real danger is where this could lead. If players realise that the mere presence of hair is enough to win fouls, we are going to see an explosion of tactical hairstyles. Full-backs with flowing locks, midfielders with carefully engineered curls, centre-halves turning up looking like tribute acts to rock bands.

Before long, every set-piece will look like a shampoo advert, and defenders won’t know whether to mark the man or the mohawk...

Staying Sharp till the end

Legendary striker Billy Sharp has signed off from Doncaster Rovers – and probably his entire career – in the most appropriate way imaginable: by walking off with a hat-trick tucked under his arm and a defender somewhere still trying to work out what just happened.

This is a man who has spent more than two decades doing pretty much one thing: scoring goals, week after week, ground after ground, quietly piling up numbers that are now bordering on the ridiculous.

His career total sits at 299 goals, which is both magnificent and deeply irritating, because he also had a fourth ruled out in that final game. Had the flag stayed down one last time he would have bowed out on a perfect 300. Instead, it is 299, and may stay that way for eternity.

Yes, I am fully aware of my Sheffield United bias here, as the man was a legend at Bramall Lane over three spells with the club. But even taking that out of the equation, Sharp has to go down as one of the greatest Football League strikers of all time. Possibly the greatest of the modern era.

Over 800 appearances, nearly 300 goals, hitting the back of the net in every one of the top four divisions, scoring a goal in almost every minute of the 90.

At 40, retirement is definitely knocking politely on the door. Knowing Sharp, he will answer it, nod and stick one more in the bottom corner before he leaves.

E-mail: jamescalvertmalta@gmail.com

X: @maltablade