It seems like a lifetime ago, but it was actually only 1996. Britpop was at its height, the heady days of John Major's undeniably raunchy leadership of Great Britain were coming to an end, Sega was about to develop a new system called the Dreamcast, and Kevin Keegan was very publicly unravelling.
Like man landing on the moon or the Kennedy assassination, everyone remembers where he or she was when Keegan went into meltdown.
Most of us were in front of the television, because that's where he had his meltdown. Wild-eyed, bristle-haired and wearing an unseemly pair of headphones, the then-Newcastle manager proclaimed that he would "love it" if his side beat Alex Ferguson's Manchester United to the Premiership title.
See? It was called the Premiership back then. Fergie was just a man, a Scottish man, not a knight of the realm. Manchester United were in the title race. It's a different world now.
Anyway, the reason we remember that moment so clearly is because it represents a key point in football's modern history. Keegan's rant is identified as the birth, and the high point, of what we would all come to call "mind games."
Strictly speaking, this is not entirely true. Blackburn goalkeeper Tim Flowers had given a similarly impassioned defence of his side's "bottle" when its ability to last the pace in the title race had been questioned the previous year. That was a result of mind games too. And Brian Clough, Bill Shankly and the rest had been doing it for decades before that.
But football is a sport that needs labels. Claudio Ranieri and Rafael Benitez are seen as the trailblazers who introduced "squad rotation" to English football, as though no manager before had ever noticed that a few of his players might need a rest now and again. Likewise, there were mind games before 1996. Until the term was invented, though, they might as well not have existed.
Since then -- and unlike Britpop, Major and the Dreamcast -- mind games have gone from strength to strength. To such an extent, in fact, that it can be quite hard to tell what is a mind game and what is just a man saying something.
So here, as a public service, is a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to mind games.
What are "mind games"? They sound a lot like some men saying quite puerile and pointless things, but everyone seems to assume they're actually terribly important.
"Mind games" are anything you want them to be. In 1996 when they were first invented, they were simple things. They were mind games in flickering black-and-white, not the digital, high-definition, surround-sound mind games you get nowadays.
Keegan's famous outburst was triggered by something that would barely warrant notice today. Ferguson had said simply that he felt Leeds United had tried to beat Manchester United rather more than they had tried to beat various other teams that season.
Now, though, we expect more of our mind games. We will pay attention to a verbal joust only if it includes a snappy sound bite -- "specialist in failure," for example -- and prompts a withering row between two managers ending with one calling the other "silly and embarrassing."
Is that the only way to do mind games? By insulting another manager?
Far from it. Mind games have long since outgrown their original roots. No longer are they restricted to the realm of news conference or flash interview barbs.
No, there are mind games everywhere. The most common (and pernicious) form relates to managers demanding "strong" referees in certain fixtures or complaining about opponents being given dubious penalties. This is an obvious, transparent attempt to influence how a game is officiated. That it has not been banned is staggering.
Jose Mourinho's team selection at Old Trafford earlier this season was seen as a mind game -- the Chelsea manager interpreted as playing without a striker as a way of fluttering his eyelashes at Wayne Rooney.
There are also mind games in the transfer market. Saying you want to sign a player is a mind game. Saying you do not want to sign a player is a mind game. Talking about how the fixture list is compiled is a mind game. They are everywhere.
They are so ubiquitous that it is almost impossible to distinguish what is real and what is fake. "I don't play the hypocrite game, and I don't say what is politically correct," Mourinho told FourFourTwo earlier this season. "But just as I don't play the hypocrite game, I don't play mind games either. I just say what I think I have to, and if people analyse that as a mind game, that's fine."
You see? He sounds like he's saying he doesn't play mind games, but is that, in itself, a mind game? His domestic life must be very hard. Deciding who is going to load the dishwasher must take hours of constant back-and-forth.
Oh yes, that is a thorny one. But do they work, or is it just something the media pretend is important because it fills papers and the endless, vacuous hours of broadcast on various shiny 24-hour news channels?
"I don't think these things have any impact. I don't see that as an advantage or disadvantage. You have a press conference or interview before a game; if you think of playing mind games, you play. If you think of just being honest and saying what you think, you do it. I do it that way. After that, if it is transformed into a reaction or it provokes something, that is not my intention. I just say what I think I have to."
That's Mourinho again. It's hard to know, because of all the mind games (we think) he plays, whether he is telling the truth or whether this too is yet another of his ruses.
Popular perception has it that mind games are a crucial weapon in a top manager's arsenal; they tend to be deployed more at the high end than the low end of the market. The most famous Ferguson-related examples -- Keegan, Flowers, Benitez's "facts" speech -- are seen as key turning points in the season, the moments when his grand psychological cunning outfoxed his foes.
The reality is a bit different. Keegan's response made great television, of course, but Newcastle had already lost their previous three away games. The collapse was in motion before the Scot opened his mouth. His words could have been the brick that brought the entire edifice down -- Jenga! -- but equally, Newcastle may have found a way to mess everything up of their own accord regardless. History certainly suggests they were capable of it.
The Flowers incident is even stranger. Yes, Flowers did come across as moderately unhinged when goaded about Blackburn's bottle, but Blackburn -- who had been stumbling, badly -- were, if anything, galvanised by the business. They went on to win the league.
As for Benitez? Well, when he appeared in front of the media with his sheet of paper, Liverpool were top of the league, seven points ahead of United, who had two games in hand. Liverpool drew their next three league games: away at Stoke and Wigan, at home to Everton. That is usually held up as proof that Benitez had cracked and his squad had noticed. They soon seemed to forget, winning 12 of their remaining 15.
United won the title by four points. The general view is that those four points are the ones dropped after Benitez's speech, but they could just have easily been the points dropped at home to West Ham, Fulham and Hull in the month before Benitez produced his piece of paper. Those games -- on very similar paper -- look significantly easier than the ones often blamed for Liverpool's miss.
That is not to say the facts incident was devoid of meaning. It seems more likely that it spurred United on rather than stalled Liverpool -- the eventual champions took 22 points from 24 at the end of the campaign, a run of form marginally more startling than Liverpool's -- and what Ferguson did, other than fairly brutally insult Benitez ("deranged" and "angry"), afterward is unclear. He did not win so much as his opponent lost.
So you don't even need to do anything to win a mind game? If I wanted to have a mind game, how would I win? Just sit there and wait for the other guy to make a mistake?
That works more often than not, in fairness, but there are a couple of other ways.
The first is to speak first. Mind games do not function like an adult conversation where the person with the best or most cogent argument tends to hold the day. Because they exist in a fast-moving news cycle, they are instead broken down into their constituent parts, a mix between the incoherent, bawdy logic of Prime Minister's Questions and the "pwning" culture beloved by teenagers on the Internet.
The process is this: You have the broadside from Manager A and the reaction from Manager B. It is rare that Manager B can win because if he reacts angrily, he will be told that Manager A has got under his skin. If he dismisses it, he can -- at best -- hope to be portrayed as not rising to the bait, a sort of no-score draw.
There is always a chance, though, that his refusal to engage will be seen as a sign of weakness.
In the end, the best way to win a mind game is to be viewed as a master of them. This is why Mourinho, like Ferguson, can never lose.
Witness his exchange with Arsene Wenger this season. The Frenchman suggested that, perhaps, some of his rivals in the title race were "afraid of failure." That is your broadside. Mourinho then responded, bringing a gun to a knife fight, by suggesting Wenger is a specialist in failure. He was hailed as being the master at work again, reversing the focus onto his foe.
If those roles had been reversed, though, the interpretation would have been very different. It would have been Wenger rising to the bait, seeing his rival get under his skin.
This is no failing of Wenger's. It is a failing of the way these interactions are painted in the media. Not all of the media -- there is not one "media" voice -- but enough to make what is perceived become true. It is not that Mourinho is a master of mind games. It is that it has been determined that he is a master of mind games, and so everything he does is cast through that prism.
That is not his fault; it is just his destiny. All he does is enjoy the ride.