José Mário dos Santos Mourinho
, is a Portuguese professional football manager and former player who is the current head coach of Italian Serie A club Roma. Formerly self-nicknamed The Special One, he is widely considered to be one of the greatest managers of all time and is one of the most decorated managers ever.
After an uneventful career as a midfielder in the Portuguese leagues, Mourinho moved into coaching, first as an interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson at Sporting CP and Porto, before gaining success as an assistant at Barcelona under both Robson and his successor, Louis van Gaal. After impressing with brief stints at Benfica and União de Leiria, Mourinho returned to Porto as manager in 2002, winning the Primeira Liga twice, a Taça de Portugal, the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Champions League, Porto's first European Cup title since 1987. That success earned him a move to England with Chelsea in 2004. Marked by his braggadocio during his early managerial career, Mourinho famously said "...I think I'm a special one" , which came to be a renowned moniker for him. With the club, he won two Premier League titles, an FA Cup and two League Cups in his three seasons at the club, before he departed in 2007 amid reports of disagreements with club owner Roman Abramovich.
In 2008, Mourinho joined Italian club Inter Milan, where he won Serie A twice, including a European treble of Serie A, the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Champions League in 2010, a first for an Italian club. This made him one of five coaches to have won the European Cup with two clubs, and later that year, earned him the first FIFA World Coach of the Year. Mourinho then moved to Real Madrid, where he won La Liga in 2011–12 with a record points tally, becoming the fifth coach to have won league titles in four countries. He also won a Copa del Rey and a Supercopa de España.
Mourinho left Real Madrid in 2013 and rejoined Chelsea, where he won another league title and League Cup, but was dismissed in 2015 after a poor run of results. In 2016, Mourinho was appointed at Manchester United and won the UEFA Europa League, League Cup and FA Community Shield in his first season. In 2018, after Manchester United suffered a poor run of league results, he was dismissed. In 2019, he became manager of Tottenham Hotspur, reaching the final of the League Cup in his second season but was dismissed in April 2021. He was soon hired by Roma, leading them to win the inaugural UEFA Europa Conference League — this made him the first manager to both reach and win the final of a major European competition with four different clubs, the third manager to have won all three major European club competitions and the first to achieve the UEFA treble by winning the Champions League, UEFA Cup/Europa League and Europa Conference League.
AS Roma boss Jose Mourinho believes that he has won trophies and titles in four different countries because he tried to understand the teams and study what they needed to improve. The Portuguese manager became the first manager to win the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League.
Over the years ever since his managerial debut, few managers have done as well as Jose Mourinho has on the biggest stages with the Portuguese boss thriving everywhere he went. That includes spells at Porto, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Tottenham and even Manchester United with the now 59-year-old winning trophies everywhere but at Spurs. However, that hasn’t dimmed his legacy one bit as Mourinho has continued that winning tradition at AS Roma, winning the first edition of the Europa Conference League.
The win also makes him the first manager to win the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League which has seen him gain even more plaudits. However, in light of criticism, Mourinho admitted that the reason why he has won trophies in four different countries is because he tries “to understand the team” and study what they need. He also added that in his opinion “the young guy of 2000 is different from the young guy of 2022”.
"What is more, I have won in these four countries very, very early on. I did not need to be there three, four or five years to win. It was immediately. In the first or maximum second season. I think that is because I tried to understand the team. I studied,” Mourinho told Sky Sports.
“I tried to get the best of the differences by trying to put into practice my own ideas but at the same time respecting the local cultures and, in my case, also the local feeling and approach to the game. The young guy of 2000 is different from the young guy of 2022.”
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