An interpretation of Jose Mourinho on Messi using QuiteBASIC code


Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Abstract. The football/soccer manager Jose Mourinho said that if a defender ends up in a one-on-one situation against Messi, the defender is dead. But presumably this is not meant literally. This paper presents some simple QuiteBASIC code for a Messi simulation, in which you are the defender, as an interpretation of Mourinho.
Draft version: version 1 (18th December 2025)
Note: accent removed from José, computer display issues.


        The soccer manager Jose Mourinho remarked that if one-on-one against Messi, the defender is dead. But many defenders have been in this situation and lived. Presumably Mourinho is not meant to be taken literally. But what does “The Special One” mean then? To use the language of philosophers, how should we cash out the metaphor? Perhaps there are multiple interpretations: there is one interpretation favoured by casual fans (thick description?) and another by experts, say. (Mourinho is a clever fellow.) But even amongst casual fans, there might be a whole family of interpretations, when one examines the matter closely. Here is a simple game I wrote in QuiteBASIC which can serve an interpretation, a cashing out.


10 PRINT "A Messi game"
20 PRINT "One on one. Will Messi go left or right: l or r?"
30 LET C = GETCHAR()
40 IF C = "l" THEN PRINT "Wrong: he went right"
50 IF C = "r" THEN PRINT "Wrong: he went left"
60 IF C = "q" THEN GOTO 80
70 GOTO 30
80 PRINT "Thanks: game over."
90 END


Maybe even in a 3 dimensional simulation, much the same code is used! (Does Mourinho know? “The coder has his job and I have mine.” Sorry for playing between the lines, Sir.)




References
Strom, Nikko. 2006-11. QuiteBASIC. Available at: https://www.quitebasic.com/
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. Available at PhilPapers:
https://philpapers.org/archive/geettd.p
(Who even put this on PhilPapers?)
J-Godly. 2018. Mourinho: "When messi has the ball and you are 1v1 you are dead. I never liked defending messi man to man". Reddit. Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/bfdmj2/mourinho_when_messi_has_the_ball_and_you_are_1v1/