Fourth Official Jonathan Moss comes between Managers Arsene Wenger of Arsenal and Jose Mourinho manager of Chelsea during the Barclays Premier League match between Chelsea and Arsenal at Stamford Bridge on October 4, 2014 in London, England.Paul Gilham/Getty Images
Once the fighting was done – most of it on the sidelines – Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho settled on his Pontius Pilate act.
"I have done so many wrongs in football," the Portuguese said after Chelsea's 2-0 manhandling of Arsenal. "But not this time."
Nearly a decade after commencing hostilities in what would become the most genuinely ill-willed rivalry in sports management, Mourinho finally, definitively got the better of Arsenal's Arsène Wenger on Sunday.
Around the 20-minute mark in a wonderfully chippy encounter, Chelsea's Gary Cahill decided to add another bending point to Alexis Sanchez's legs. Sanchez was lucky to escape uninjured. Cahill was lucky to stay on the field.
Of course, it was Mourinho who took offence, shrieking at the Arsenal bench about the call. Wenger – 64-years-old, public intellectual, so Ancien Régime he ought to wear a powdered wig – walked over and shoved his counterpart.
Not a hard shove. No cursing. No suggestion of follow-up violence. But in that moment, Wenger lost the war.
The Frenchman has made a very good career out of his tendency toward detachment. Regardless of how things are going, he refuses to change anything about his approach or his tactical outlook. The game ebbs and flows, but Wenger's teams bob in place.
He's been a target through all of his nearly twenty years at Arsenal.
Maybe he isn't vain and arrogant, but he makes very little effort to avoid that impression. He arrived armed with a résumé that would fit on a matchbook. He brought the glamour of the continent with him, and nothing else.For a moment, Wenger changed soccer by putting all the emphasis – every iota – on relentless forward movement. It's changed since, but Wenger is still trying to turn a good old idea into a bad new one.
More important, what Wenger reinvented was the approach. Before him, the men who managed English teams were proudly coarse when pushed into tight spots. They were shovers. Wenger just stood there with his arms crossed, being brilliant and aloof. The Wenger of a decade ago did all his shoving in the standings.
In 2005, Mourinho arrived. He was just as polished, narcissistic and preposterously European. But he had two qualities Wenger lacks – cruelty and pragmatism.
He didn't care how the team played as long as it won. His first concern was in boosting his own profile, by pegging down his counterparts. From the off, Wenger was a soft target.
The Frenchman never managed to get himself crouched down low enough to match Mourinho's level of scorn. Early on, the Portuguese labelled Wenger "a voyeur."
"There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what is going on in other families. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea."
This wasn't banter. On a level it's hard to pinpoint, it was sordid.
Wenger tried firing back. It never took. He couldn't find a deep-enough register; and he was losing. Wenger's Arsenal has never beaten Mourinho's Chelsea.
Mourinho began a stiff, cordial relationship with the Premiership's alpha dog, Alex Ferguson. He almost certainly did it in part to annoy Wenger, who hated the former Manchester United boss.
Mourinho won trophies. He returned to the continent. He won more trophies. He didn't just steal Wenger's thunder. He robbed him of his identity. The Arsenal boss was once the smartest man in the game. Mourinho didn't usurp the title – he took it from him by force and cunning.
Wenger was the kid who learns how to fight from a book, and gets sucker punched during the handshake.
Earlier this year, the most unkindest cut of all. Wenger unwisely chided Mourinho's team for lacking ambition – what he called "a fear of failure."
Mourinho uses the English language like a cudgel. He isn't conversant in the idioms, but he knows how to hurt you with it. He turned the idea over in his mind for a while before flinging it back, calling Wenger "a specialist in failure."
It hurts because it's true. A month later, Chelsea humiliated Arsenal 6-0.
Wenger had nearly a year to prepare his on-field riposte. One wonders what he did with the time. On Sunday, it wasn't that his team had no answers. They didn't seem to have been apprised of the questions.
Arsenal didn't manage a single shot on goal during the loss. They hadn't matched that statistical nadir in 11 years.
Instead, we have The Shove.
A bunch of other managers – Sam Allardyce or Alan Pardew leap to mind – might have punched Mourinho, and in so doing made themselves folk heroes.
Given what Wenger once represented, this was nothing but a final disappointment. After drifting above the fray Mourinho craves for so long, he finally fell for the goading. Some will say he looked forceful. To me, he looked rattled.
Afterward, he compounded the impression by calling the incident a "little push" (Cool). And then offering to show the press gallery what a real push looks like (Not quite so cool).
Mourinho continued to unsettle his over-matched opponent, in this instance by having the gall to forgive him.
"The behaviour he has is the behaviour I have. It's the behaviour a lot of us have. It's no problem."
This once was riveting stuff. Now, you wish someone would step in and end it. Wenger was once so commanding. Never particularly likable, but easily admirable. There's no pleasure in watching him return over and over to receive the same beating.