In 'Harry's Games' John Crace argues that Redknapp lacked the kind of ambition that Mourinho has:
'Redknapp was forty-five when he resigned/was forced out as Bournemouth manager, the age by which many men will have hoped already to have made their mark. He had also already turned down supposed offers to join West Ham, Aston Villa and Stoke. He then went on to West Ham as number two to Billy Bonds before inheriting the top job at Upton Park a couple of years later. After that, he returned to the south coast to manage Portsmouth and Southampton, both clubs — like West Ham — with no great expectations of instant success. He had turned down the job at Newcastle and the Spurs job had also rather landed in his lap. He hadn’t been actively seeking it and a significant factor in his accepting it seemed to be that London was close enough to his home in Sandbanks for him to commute daily.
This may have been the career of a hard-working and talented manager, but it wasn’t one driven by the vaulting ambition of a Fergie, a Wenger or a Mourinho, the alpha males of football for whom anything less than 110 per cent, heart-on-sleeve commitment to being the best is an intolerable admission of weakness. Redknapp’s ambition appears to fall somewhere well short of theirs, somewhere comfortably and recognizably classifiable within the well-adjusted band of the spectrum. He wants to do well, he’s prepared to work hard to succeed, but the bottom line is that there are other things that mean more to him than football. Redknapp’s main aim had always been to make a living out of football, to earn enough money to provide for his family while doing something he enjoyed.' |  |
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