Mourinho at Manchester: a study of power at the world’s most valuable football club
O'Boyle, Neil
(2019)
Mourinho at Manchester: a study of power at the world’s most valuable football club.
In: 8th International Conference on European Popular Culture (EUPOP 2019), 16-18 July 2019, Limerick, Ireland.
This paper draws on John Kenneth Galbraith’s bestselling book, The Anatomy of
Power, to reflect on the operation of power in the context of a professional soccer club.
Galbraith’s framework, which is composed of three sources and three instruments of
power, is first described and then illustrated via an analysis of José Mourinho’s brief
tenure as manager of Manchester United. The findings offer support for Galbraith’s
suggestion that the role of ‘personality’ (in this case managerial personality) is often
overemphasized in accounts of power. The paper concludes with a discussion of
Galbraith’s ‘dialectic of power’ – its tendency to produce countervailing expressions
and positions – and focuses in particular on the social media-enhanced power of
celebrity players.