There are press conferences and then there are spectacles, not always matching communication strategies.

What Real Madrid president Florentino Perez staged on Tuesday - emerging after more than a decade without a press conference to rage against journalists, invoke conspiracies and warn that they would have to "shoot him out" of the Bernabeu - was a man in a bunker, surrounded by enemies real and invented.

It was the starting gun of a new era. Because hovering over that entire chaotic hour was the truth everyone in the room already knew: Jose Mourinho is coming back to Real Madrid, 13 years after his previous explosive stint.

And here is the darkly fitting thing: Mourinho's entire managerial philosophy - the siege mentality, the us-against-the-world framing, the weaponisation of grievance, the use of media as the enemies - is perfectly calibrated for the climate Perez has spent years cultivating.

A president who is highly critical of referees, who believes the media wants to destroy him, and that…