José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix GOIH (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ mo

ˈɾiɲu] (listen); born 26 January 1963), is a Portuguese professional football

manager and former player who is the current head coach of Italian Serie A club
Roma. Once dubbed "The Special One" by the British media, Mourinho is one of the
most decorated managers ever and is widely considered to be among the greatest
managers of all time.[2]

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.[3]

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,[4] and later that year, earned him the
first FIFA World Coach of the Year.[5] Mourinho then moved to Real Madrid in Spain,
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.[6][7] 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.[8]
Remaining in England, he was appointed at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur
respectively,[9][10] but his tenure at both clubs were relatively short-lived and
ended in acrimonious fashion.[11] Despite this, he won the UEFA Europa League,
League Cup and FA Community Shield in his first season with Manchester United, and
led Tottenham to the final of the League Cup. 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.[12]

He was named Portuguese Coach of the Century by the Portuguese Football Federation
(FPF) in 2015,[13] and was the first coach to spend more than £1 billion on
transfers.[14] Due to his tactical knowledge, charismatic and controversial
personality, and a reputation for prioritising results over attractive football, he
has drawn comparisons, by both admirers and critics, with Argentine manager Helenio
Herrera.[15][16]

Early life, playing career and education

Mourinho was born in 1963 to a large middle-class family in Setúbal (a suburb of
the Lisbon metropolitan area), Portugal, the son of José Manuel Mourinho Félix, who
was known by the name Félix Mourinho, and his wife, Maria Júlia Carrajola dos
Santos.[17][18] His father played football professionally for Belenenses and
Vitória de Setúbal, earning one cap for Portugal in the course of his career. His
mother was a primary school teacher from an affluent background;[19] her uncle
funded the construction of the Vitória de Setúbal football stadium. The fall of
António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo regime in April 1974, however, led to the
family losing all but a single property in nearby Palmela.[20]
Mourinho wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and joined the Belenenses youth
team. Graduating to the senior level, he left the club in 1980 to sign for Rio Ave,
where he played for the reserve team, and in 1981, was joined by his father, who
was named first team manager. There, he struck up a prolific partnership with
veteran striker Mário Reis. According to former teammate Baltemar Brito (who would
become an assistant to Mourinho early on his managerial career), the duo scored
around 100 goals, with Mourinho netting forty-seven times.[21] In addition to
playing for the reserves, Mourinho was usually tasked with scouting other teams for
his father.[22] He was rarely selected by his father, but he made his debut for the
club in the third round of the Taça de Portugal, in a 2–1 extra time win over
Salgueiros.[21] However, on the final day of the campaign against champions-elect
Sporting CP, a defender was injured in the pre-match warm up, so he was told to get
changed. Club president José Maria Pinho, fearing the threat of nepotism, overruled
the decision to do so; the incident saw the pair leave to join Belenenses in the
summer.[23] Mourinho mostly spent the season playing for the reserve team, and he
played for the first team in the second round of the Taça de Portugal against Vila
Franca do Campo. With Belenenses 8–0 up at half-time, Mourinho came on as a second-
half substitute and scored a hat-trick as the team won 17–0, which remains the
club's biggest ever victory in the tournament.[21] When his father returned to Rio
Ave, Mourinho did not go with him and continued to play in the lower levels of the
Portuguese football league system, first with Sesimbra, and then for Comércio e
Indústria, where he finished his career. At the latter club, he was captain of the
team and would save the life of a teammate who had gotten trapped in a car that had
caught on fire.[24] Mourinho decided that he lacked the requisite pace and power to
become a professional and chose to focus on becoming a football coach instead.[19]
[25][26]

His mother enrolled him in a business school, but Mourinho dropped out on his first
day, deciding he would rather focus on sport, and chose to attend the Instituto
Superior de Educação Física (ISEF), Technical University of Lisbon, to study sports
science.[20] After attending coaching courses held by the English and Scottish
Football Associations, former Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh took note of the young
Portuguese's drive and attention to detail.[27] Mourinho sought to redefine the
role of coach in football by mixing coaching theory with motivational and
psychological techniques.[19]