Jose Mourinho at 60: How has he changed the footballing landscape?
Mourinho has been involved in football since the 80s as a player before switching to coaching a decade later, where he teamed up with late, great English manager Bobby Robson in Portugal and Spain as a translator, but also as a coach, where he was an important cog in Robson’s backroom staff.
But, given what we know about the Setubal-born Mourinho, that was never going to be enough.
His managerial career began in Portugal at the turn of the millennium, before he sprang into the consciousness of the world with his time at Porto. Despite only being in charge for two years, he won everything he could - league, domestic cup as well as the UEFA Cup and the big one, the UEFA Champions League.
Now, nearly 19 years on from his Portuguese departure, he has never returned to coach in his native country, but that doesn’t mean he has not left a mark. We asked Flashscore.pt senior editor, Andre Guerra, to tell us what his home nation really thinks of him.
PORTO PERFECTION
Benfica gave him his first chance, bringing the young coach as a breath of fresh air after Jupp Heynckes, breaking the shackles of conservatism. The club was in a full blown internal crisis, coupled with a bad squad and Jose was starting to be… Jose. He lashed out at the star Sabry who complained about his playing time.
He started getting results, but the presidency changed and they didn’t offer the renewal he wanted. So he took a step back and joined Uniao de Leiria.
A relatively small club he left in fourth place after six months, playing the best football in the country, before joining Porto mid-season in 2001/02, bringing with him players like Nuno Valente and Derlei at the start of the next season.
With the move came the early signs of a Special One and his antics. The famous press conference in which he said: “We are the best team in the country. In normal conditions we are better. In normal conditions we will be champions. And in abnormal conditions we will also be champions."
His slamming of the table was the epitome of the man who, unbeknownst to him, would go to achieve the unprecedented feat in modern football of winning two major continental titles in a row.
After the UEFA Cup, the next season he won the League, the Portuguese Super Cup and, despite a draw and a loss in the first two games in the group stage, the dragons lifted the Champions League trophy after demolishing Monaco (3-0) in Gelsenkirchen.
Two days later he was off to Chelsea. A Portuguese saying at the time pointed out that he “celebrated the Champions League in Roman Abrahamovich’s yacht”. As magically and controversially as he came... he left.
Between then and now much has happened to the prodigal son whose rebellious nature has turned heads and hearts of every football fan in Portugal. His relationship with FC Porto and their fans has been of mistrust and pride on both ends.
There’s also a connection with the Portuguese past and its myths, like D. Sebastao - a promising king who disappeared in the battle of Alcacer Quibir and promised he would come back in the fog.
Mourinho conquered Portugal. We still wait, no matter how long it will take, for his comeback and to guide the Portuguese national team to new conquests, but, such as the former heir to the throne, that hope is fading away.”
'A SPECIAL ONE'
From Porto to Chelsea, via a yacht party and he picked up where he left off, both on and off the pitch. Although most successful with the Blues, he has managed Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in England to lesser achievements.
We head to the nation’s capital to hear from Flashscore.co.uk senior editor, Brad Ferguson to hear about the influence across 15 years of management and he started with a bang.
It wouldn’t be long before the press got their soundbytes, with Jose’s infamous self-dubbing as ‘The Special One’ still heavily attached to his name to this day.
He presided over what many argue to be one of the greatest teams ever seen in Premier League history, solidifying English talents such as John Terry and Frank Lampard and adding eventual cult heroes like Didier Drogba, Petr Cech and Arjen Robben into the mix.
He would change the way the game was played for years to come, acting as an antithesis to the swashbuckling style of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United and the silkiness of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal - the two most traditionally dominant teams prior to Mourinho’s arrival.
His ‘park the bus’ defensive style upset almost everyone bar fans of Chelsea, who would go on to create their own new history immediately with title wins in 2004-05 and 2005-06, as well as two FA Cups, a League Cup and Community Shield in his first stint at the club.
Together with Abramovich’s money-fuelled Chelsea project, he had changed the face of English football as we all knew it. Fans either loved him or loved to hate him, and he seemed to enjoy every inch of the spotlight either way.
He returned to West London to much fanfare in 2013, albeit with a more competitive league to contend with. He again won the Premier League and League Cup in 2014-15 with a strong squad featuring many of his old players.
His battles with managerial foes were legendary, famously calling Arsene Wenger “a specialist in failure” after a public spat between the pair during his second spell.
His stint at Manchester United, criticised at the time perhaps due to a disconnect with fans over not playing ‘the Man Utd way’, is now seen as something of a success in hindsight, with Mourinho securing a second-place finish in the 2017-18 season - the best league return from a manager at Old Trafford in the post-Ferguson age.
He also won 2016’s Community Shield and won a League Cup and Europa League cup double in 2016-2017 - making him one of the most successful managers in Manchester United’s history - something he was keen to remind people in press conferences.
Before taking the Spurs job in 2019 he was commonplace on British TV screens, putting in intriguing appearances as a pundit and playing in charity football matches, even hilariously going in goal for a shootout at a widely televised charity match at Loftus Road in 2017.
Taking the job as a newly proclaimed ‘Humble One’, the Tottenham role would become his only managerial spell to go without a trophy - a statistic not exclusive to Mourinho.
He did however guide the club to a League Cup final amid a pandemic-hit season and in front of Amazon’s All of Nothing camera crew. He was inexplicably sacked a week before the final was set to be played - Tottenham’s first final appearance in a decade - and the Lilywhites would go on to lose under the stewardship of caretaker manager, Ryan Mason.
Mourinho is a coach who has not only left a legacy on English football, he’s undeniably an icon of it.
A pillar of Premier League history, he paved the way for big, bold and entertaining characters like Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte to come into teams and imprint their own philosophies, and despite some seemingly unfair criticism over his style and approach, Jose has consistently seen success wherever he’s worked.
The Special One. The Humble One. Either way, a Legendary One.
FORZA JOSE
He left his first spell at Chelsea under a cloud, but found a new home fast with Inter Milan - another Champions League victory would find him there as well as more controversy. To talk us through his two spells in Italy, we enlisted the help of flashscore.it's, Giulia Polidoro.
A symbol, an example of great football stories, a catalyst of love and hate at the same time. This is Jose Mourinho for Serie A.
The Portuguese coach has his name etched into one of the most important pages of football for Italy, that of Inter's Treble. The triumph for a team that had always shone up to that point, however, had always had many regrets in the final stages of their most important tournaments.
Mourinho brought the winning mentality back to Milan, forever enshrining it in legend. That is why, even today, his bond with the Inter fans remains unbreakable.
Ten years after that farewell, after winning everything, he returned to Serie A, this time on with Roma. A love affair, the one with the Capitoline fans, which broke out immediately, but which for some time struggled to translate onto the playing field.
The turning point was the Conference League, the first trophy after a long drought for the Giallorossi club. In a historically difficult square, the bond between club, coach, players and fans continues to strengthen match after match, proof once again of the good work of the coach.
Of his many gestures, the Portuguese coach's iconography in Serie A cannot fail to include the gesture that has stuck in the collective imagination the most: that of the handcuffs at Inter - Sampdoria in 2010, which earned him a three-game suspension.
That is the image that perfectly explains Mourinho's symbol in Italy: showman, centraliser, but above all dragger of his teams.
MADRID MADNESS
Our final stop in Europe is to Spain and Madrid, where Mourinho spent three years at the helm of Real Madrid - tasked with breaking up the dominance of Barcelona and his former charge Pep Guardiola.
Here, we spoke to senior editor Cesar Suarez from flashscore.es, who explained how Mourinho still casts a shadow over Los Blancos.
After his earlier stint with Robson as translator and assistant, this memory leaves many with an unpleasant vision of his later spell at Real Madrid. After several extremely tense Clasicos that even affected the personal relationship between Spanish national team players, he stuck his finger in the eye of the late Tito Vilanova.
It was, without doubt, the most embarrassing controversy that he is remembered for in these parts. And there were many more.
But to be fair, beyond the many controversies he was involved in - even with his own players - on a sporting level Mourinho is remembered as the coach who managed to put an end to the hegemony of Guardiola's Barcelona.
After a hat-trick of titles in a single season, the Catalan side seemed invincible until Madrid, with an extra-time goal from Cristiano Ronaldo (37), beat them in the final of the Copa del Rey.
And the following year, they won LaLiga, precipitating the departure of the now Manchester City manager.
He was unable, however, to win the Champions League, bowing out in the semi-finals in all three years he coached Los Blancos. That was the end of his history at the Bernabeu.
There are those who, in some years of Real Madrid's title drought, have called for his return, his strong hand in the dressing room. But the decision not to re-sign him has been more influenced by the erosion he caused even in the Madrid faithful, divided between the club's traditional values and the antagonistic ones espoused by Mourinho, than by his sporting achievements.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
From his humble beginnings to reaching the pinnacle of the sport, Mourinho has captured hearts and minds throughout his career across Europe - and not always in the best ways.
But, as he turns 60, we are seeing a mellowing to his character. Does that mean he is done causing trouble or scaling those heights again - absolutely not.
As his legacy continues to grow, it’s unlikely that his star will wane. If anything, his achievements will only be more revered. A spell in international management later in his career feels a logical next step and given his affinity to his native land, that seems the best destination.
One thing is for certain though, we are not done hearing from ‘the special one’ anytime soon.