The Special One Triumphs Once Again
Personal information
Full name Jose Mario dos Santos Mourinho Felix
Date of birth: 26 January 1963
Age: 52
Place of birth: Setubal, Lisbon, Portugal
Playing position: Defender
Club information
Current team: Chelsea (manager)
Senior career
1980–1982 Rio Ave 16 Appearances, 2 goals
1982–1983 Belenenses 16 Appearances, 2 goals
1983–1985 Sesimbra 35 Appearances, 1 goal
1985–1987 Comercio e Indústria 27 Appearances, 8 goals
Teams managed
2000 Benfica
2001–2002 Uniao de Leiria
2002–2004 Porto
2004–2007 Chelsea
2008–2010 Inter Milan
2010–2013 Real Madrid
2013– Chelsea
Managerial Honours
In ten seasons of club management, Mourinho has led his club to win its domestic league eight times, the UEFA Champions League twice and the UEFA Cup once. Between 2003 and 2012, Mourinho did not go a single calendar year without winning at least one trophy.
Porto (2002–2004)
Primeira Liga: 2002–03, 2003–04
Taca de Portugal: 2002–03
Supertaca Candido de Oliveira: 2003
UEFA Champions League: 2003–04
UEFA Cup: 2002–03
Chelsea (2004–2007, 2013–)
Premier League: 2004–05, 2005–06, 2014–15
FA Cup: 2006–07
Football League Cup: 2004–05, 2006–07, 2014–15
FA Community Shield: 2005
Inter Milan (2008–2010)
Serie A: 2008–09, 2009–10
Coppa Italia: 2009–10
Supercoppa Italiana: 2008
UEFA Champions League: 2009–10
Real Madrid (2010–2013)
La Liga: 2011–12
Copa del Rey: 2010–11
Supercopa de Espana: 2012
In guiding Chelsea to their fourth Premier League title, manager Jose Mourinho has secured the 22nd trophy of his career. Following his latest triumph, Mourinho now averages a trophy every 34 matches as a manager. Since taking charge of Porto in 2002, the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ has swept all before him – both domestically and in European competition.
While still well behind Sir Alex Ferguson’s record of 13 Premier League titles, the range of silverware in Mourinho’s trophy cabinet is no less impressive. The Chelsea boss has won the league in four different countries, lifted the European Cup with two clubs, won a Uefa Cup, an FA Cup and three League Cups, as well as securing an array of domestic cups in Portugal, Italy and Spain. Out of 40 league games against Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal, Mourinho has lost just three times. Arsene Wenger’s failure to beat Mourinho has received plenty of attention recently, but Arsenal are certainly not the only Premier League side to have struggled against the Chelsea boss. The Gunners are just one of 19 clubs that have not recorded a single victory against the Special One. Of the 19 teams Mourinho has not lost to in the league as Chelsea boss, he has a 100% record against eight. This includes seven wins out of seven against Portsmouth, who were in the Premier League during Mourinho’s first spell in charge. The Portuguese manager has tasted victory against every team he has played in the Premier League and lost just once against nine clubs, including the losses to Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City mentioned above. Of these defeats, all but one has come away from home. The only loss Mourinho has suffered at Stamford Bridge in the league came in a 2-1 defeat by Sunderland last season.
On a balmy Sunday afternoon at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea produced a display of orderly, low‑throttle, title‑bound football that always seemed to be heading just one way. With a few moments left Jose Mourinho could be seen wandering along the touchline to clasp hands sombrely with Alan Pardew and even offer a little kiss on the cheek, completing the sense of a match that had felt from the start like a composed, quietly celebratory viking funeral for the Premier League title race. At the end of which Chelsea are champions, and a genuinely fine achievement for Mourinho – who now has eight league titles in 12 years across three countries – deserves to be celebrated. The last time Chelsea’s manager won the Premier League he ended up hurling his medal into the Chelsea fans behind the goal in the Matthew Harding stand. This time you suspect he might just want to hang on to his own memento of a victory that is likely to feel like a special one even for the Special One. Not because, when it finally arrives, this will be a first significant piece of silverware in three years, a moment to refurnish Mourinho’s winning lustre after a mid-career clearing of the throat. But above all, another league title is a remarkable achievement in its own right
There is an element of history being made here. Mourinho is now the first manager in English league history to return to a former champion club and win the league title again. “In my country we say all the time don’t go back to where you were happy before,” Mourinho noted afterwards, and with good reason. There have been 52 other title-winning managers: none of them have ever done this before. In a similar vein Mourinho is only the fifth manager in 122 years of league football to win league titles 10 years apart, after Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Matt Busby and the Victorian secretary managers George Ramsey of Aston Villa and Tom Watson of Liverpool and Sunderland. There will be the usual caveats in victory from those outside Stamford Bridge, from the mediocrity of the league this year to the widespread aesthetic objections that seem to suggest the meat-and-potatoes English football fan has now been transformed into a kind of armchair Oscar Wilde, holding a lavender-scented kerchief to his nose at the spectacle of well-organised, versatile winning football. Frankly, though, watching Chelsea’s players cavort in the blue and white ticker-tape at the end of a match in which the champions strolled over the line with six defenders on the pitch, and a near-immobile 37-year-old centre-forward, it is hard to see anything but a triumph of management, based around two key decisions. First, Mourinho acted quickly last summer. Chelsea needed a striker, a left-back and a new central midfielder. Diego Costa, Filipe Luís and Cesc Fabregas duly arrived, a net summer spend of £5m, enough to transform a slightly clanky team into champions. Mourinho’s second decisive moment came as Chelsea’s flying start was gummed by injury and fatigue. It is this, the change to a more pragmatic style from autumn to winter, that the self-appointed purists have bemoaned. In fact, it is here Mourinho deserves most credit. The moment that squished, decisively, any sense of a wobble was the Capital One Cup final. With Nemanja Matic suspended Chelsea played four central defenders, won 2-0 and haven’t looked back since, conceding five goals in nine matches and taking 23 points from 27. Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City have also had tough patches. The difference is none have coped so well with the difficult moments. Indeed, at times this decisive 1-0 defeat of Crystal Palace felt a bit like a playful riff on Chelsea’s season to date. Predictably enough Eden Hazard made the difference towards the end of a familiarly tight first half. First the PFA Player of the Year burst on to Willian’s cute flick only to tumble in a collision with James McArthur. Hazard was clever enough to leave the referee with little choice but to award a penalty, and then directed a well-judged header into the corner after his kick was saved by Julian Speroni. And that, to Chelsea’s credit, was pretty much that.
Combining his two spells in England, Mourinho’s win percentage is better than any manager in Premier League history. He has won 135 of 193 Premier League games in charge of the London club, which comes to a win percentage rate of 70%. Under Mourinho, Chelsea have lost fewer than one in 10 league games. All hail “The Special One”.
Early Days
José Mário dos Santos Félix Mourinho, affectionately known as “Ze” to family and friends, was born in Setubal, Portugal in 1963. His father, Felix, was a professional goalkeeper who later became a manager of several Portuguese clubs. His mother, Maria Julia, taught primary school. According to his father, Felix, Mourinho’s affinity, aptitude and acute attention to detail for football management began very early.
“When he was 13 or 14 I became a manager and had to travel. Jose would always find a way to turn up wherever I was. By coach, or even fish transport truck, he would always be with me somehow for the weekend matches. He started to manage the ball boys. He would position himself behind our bench. I’d give him instructions which he would pass on to the players, running to the other side of the pitch to tell them. So he began very early to deal with tactics and systems of play…
When he was 15 or 16 he told me he wanted to be a manager. He started to watch the teams we were going to play and prepare reports, and that helped me a lot. I remember when I was manager at Uniao de Madeira that we went to play away in Amadora. We needed at least a draw to reach the play-offs for a place in the top division of the Portuguese League.”
Mourinho learned about the ephemeral nature of football management at a young age: “I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.”
Mourinho joined the youth ranks of Belenenses, and then played for his father at Rio Ave as a defender. Mourinho also played for second division side, Sesimbra, and studied Physical Education and Sports Science at the Instituto Superior de Educacao Fisica (The Technical University of Lisbon). He spent five years in University and earned a diploma. In a May 2004 interview with the The Times of London, Mourinho admitted his playing limitations: “By 23, I had realised his limits as a player. I’m an intelligent person. I knew I was not going to go any higher. The second division was my level.”
He worked as a Physical Education teacher at local Lisbon schools. He earned coaching badges and became the youth team manager at Vitoria Setubal, and then an assistant coach at Estrela da Amadora. During his efforts to increase his coaching knowledge, Mourinho was noticed by a prominent figure in world football. “He took courses in coaching, some under the auspices of the Football Association and the Scottish FA, where Andy Roxburgh, the former Scotland manager, would be an important influence, ‘particularly on training organisation, the points and techniques you need to establish in practice sessions’. Roxburgh was impressed by his student and his attention to detail.”
The warm Portuguese sun shone brightly on Mourinho in 1992. He came into the orbit of Sir Bobby Robson, the legendary English manager. Mr. Robson went to Portugal to manage Sporting Lisbon. He hired Mourinho as his Portuguese to English interpreter and translator. Mr. Robson immediately recognized that Mourinho’s translation skills were merely the tip of the iceberg:
The Englishman quickly understood that Mourinho was more than simply a translator and asked him to watch forthcoming opponents. “He’d come back and hand me a dossier that was absolutely first class. I mean first class,” Robson told the journalist Patrick Barclay, who has recently (2005) published a fine biography of Mourinho, subtitled Anatomy of a Winner (Orion). “As good as anything I’ve ever received. Here he was, in his early thirties, never been a player, never been a coach to speak of either, giving me reports as good as anything I ever got.”
Mr. Robson was sacked by Sporting but quickly landed at FC Porto. Mourinho became part of his backroom staff. When Robson took over the FC Barcelona bench in 1996, Mourinho followed him to Catalonia and learned Catalan. He became known as “El Tradutor,” or “The Translator.” Barcelona would mark a turning point in their relationship. Robson was sacked in 1997, but Mourinho stayed on to assist his successor, Louis van Gaal. Mourinho never forgot the influence of Sir Bobby: “I owe him for so much. I was a nobody in football when he came to Portugal. He helped me to work in two clubs here (Sporting and Porto) and he took me to one of the biggest clubs in the world (Barcelona). We are very different, but I got from him the idea of what it is to be a top coach… He’s a field man, who thrives on direct contact with the players. He is also a coach dedicated to attack. If we divide the game into three areas of build-up, you would say Bobby Robson’s work is to focus on the final third. It meant that a lot of the emphasis of my work was towards the defence.”
Mourinho stayed three years at Barcelona where his attention to detail and personal touch were noted by players such as Laurent Blanc and Josep “Pep” Guardiola. He turned down Robson’s offer to be his second in command at Newcastle United. He returned to Portugal in 2000 for his first head coaching job with Benfica. His spell with the iconic Portuguese club was rather short. He departed for Uniao de Leiria in January 2001. A year later, he arrived at the club that would launch him onto the world stage: FC Porto.
He wrote a letter to each player at Porto that stressed his man-management philosophy: “Welcome to Porto” the letter began. “Hope you have recharged your motivation and ambition . . . From here, each practice, each game, each minute of your social life must centre on the aim of being champions . . . First-teamer will not be a correct word. I need all of you. You need each other. We are a TEAM.” Along the bottom margin of the page, there was an equation: “ Motivation + Ambition + Team + Spirit = SUCCESS.” (7)
He won everything at his disposal in two years at Porto: The Portuguese Cup and SuperCup, two Portuguese League titles, the UEFA Cup in 2003 and the UEFA Champions League in 2004.
He has never looked back and if The Special One keeps up his incredible record then he could go down as the best manager the world has seen.
