In José Mourinho's view, building a football team isn't all that different from preparing a meal.
The first approach is like going to a buffet: you pick whatever dishes you want. If you need balanced play, you bring in strong, disciplined wide players. If you want to sit deep and strike on the counter, you recruit fast attackers who thrive in open space. With this model, the coach has total freedom—he shapes the squad first, then chooses the style.
The second approach is more like tailoring a suit to fit the person wearing it. You don't get to choose the fabric; you work with what you have. Instead of forcing a system onto the squad, you look for the tactics that best amplify the players' strengths. You place each player where his traits can be most effective, and from there the tactical outline emerges naturally. But this method inevitably comes with limitations: you inherit both the strengths and the weaknesses of the squad, and flexibility is far more restricted.
