The photographers had been briefed. They were told by their employers that almost as important as taking the pictures of players clutching the European Cup would be to capture the moment when Jose Mourinho filed along the row of dignitaries and received the congratulations of Florentino Perez, the club president in whose stadium the Champions League final had just taken place. The shutters whirred as Perez, beaming, reached out to offer a congratulatory handshake. Mourinho, clutching one of the match balls with which Inter Milan had achieved their 2-0 win over Bayern Munich, grinned back at his next employer.
Not long afterwards, talking to the media, Mourinho was asked if he had spoken recently to Perez. He said no. He was asked if he expected to do so soon. "In the next couple of days," he replied. In fact, the negotiations over Mourinho's move from Milan to Madrid had been well advanced for a week, and only one important detail remained unclear: whether Perez would be able to gatecrash the coronation of the new European champions by making his Real Madrid seem almost as much the winners from the night as Inter were. He did. Real will soon officially announce they will be employing Mourinho, who is the only head coach since the turn of the millennium to win the Champions League with two different clubs.
It will be an intriguing marriage. Mourinho is unlike most of the half-dozen head coaches Perez has taken on in his six years as club president. Most of them have been self-effacing men, at least publicly. Those who were not, such as Jose Antonio Camacho, the Spaniard, and Wanderley Luxemburgo, the Brazilian, would end up losing their battles with a president whose vision of what Real should be is dogmatic and whose executive style is hands-on and ruthless. Camacho lasted barely four matches in charge before his resignation. Luxemburgo would eventually find himself compromised when he clashed with players whom Perez regarded as too important to the image of the club to be marginalised.
Mourinho need only look at the turnover of coaches in Madrid to know the challenge. He need only look at the way Perez promotes the idea of superstardom as a motor to drive Real economically to see that there are potential contradictions ahead. Between the one-for-all-and-all-for-one dynamic the Portuguese likes to build in his squads, and the aggressive promotion of individual players that Perez nourishes, things are likely to come to a head.
Perez is a very successful businessman and has brought a good deal of money into Spain's most celebrated club. He has spent a lot of it, too, breaking the world transfer fee record three times since he arrived there bringing Luis Figo from Barcelona in 2000, Zinedine Zidane from Juventus a year later and hiring Cristiano Ronaldo for some ?80 million (Dh368m) last summer. Yet Real have not made good on that investment; the last time they won the league with Perez at the helm was in 2003 - in between his two presidencies, they won it twice - and the last time they got as far as even the quarter-finals of the Champions League was in 2004. In short, in the Primera Liga, Perez's Real resemble the Inter of the 1990s: the extravagant spenders who year after year choked in pursuit of the Italian scudetto.
In Europe they resemble the Inter that Mourinho took over, underachievers, and whom on Saturday night he organised in such a way that they won their first European Cup for 45 years. Those in the Bernabeu might have asked if Inter's strategy, to score on the break, to go ahead with a goal that followed a long punt upfield from the goalkeeper, and to allow Bayern to have most of the possession, was Mourinho's way or just a habit developed in Serie A.
In Spain's Liga, the game is distinct. Real like to think of themselves as a cradle of passing, stylish football. Mourinho will also know that, and know that the beautiful football is not something he is primarily associated with. Expect some rocky patches in this marriage. sports@thenational.ae
Inter Milan became the fourth team to reach Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi in December Qualified Europe Inter Milan, Italy North and Central America Pachuca, Mexico Oceania Hekari United, Papua New Guinea Hosts Al Wahda, UAE To be confirmed South America Asia Africa