José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix, or simply José Mourinho was born 26 January 1963. He is a Portuguese football manager, currently the head coach of Real Madrid. Mourinho started out as a player and eventually switched to management. After working as a physical education teacher and spells working as a youth team coach, a scout, and an assistant manager in the early 1990s, he became an interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson. He worked with Robson at Sporting Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, and Barcelona in Spain. He remained at the Catalonian club after Robson's departure and worked with his successor Louis van Gaal.
He is commonly known as «The Special One». Mourinho is regarded by some players, coaches, and critics as one of the best football coaches of all time.
In 2008 Mourinho signed a three-year contract with Serie A club Internazionale. Within three months he had won his first Italian honour, the Supercoppa Italiana, and completed the season by winning the Serie A title. In 2009–10 Inter became the first Italian club to win the treble of Serie A, Coppa Italia and the UEFA Champions League, the first time Inter had won the latter competition since 1965. Mourinho moved to Chelsea the following year and won the Premier League title, the club's first league title in 50 years, and the League Cup in his first season. In his second year Chelsea retained the Premier League and in 2006–07 he took the club to an FA Cup and League Cup double, though they finished as league runners-up. He often courted controversy for his outspokenness, but his victories at Chelsea and Porto established him as one of the world's top football managers. Mourinho left Chelsea in September 2007, amidst reports of a rift with club owner Roman Abramovich.
In doing so, Mourinho became the third manager in football history to win the UEFA Champions League with two different teams, after Ernst Happel and Ottmar Hitzfeld. He won the first ever FIFA Ballon d'Or Best Coach Award in 2010. He then signed with Real Madrid in 2010, winning the Copa del Rey in his first season. The following year he won the La Liga and became the fourth coach, after Tomislav Ivić, Ernst Happel, and Giovanni Trapattoni, to have won league titles in at least four different countries: Portugal, England, Italy, and Spain, also becoming the first manager to win the traditional top three European league championships. He began focusing on coaching and impressed with brief but successful managerial periods at Benfica and União de Leiria, taking the latter to their highest ever league finish. He returned to Porto in early 2002 as head coach, winning the Primeira Liga, Taça de Portugal, and UEFA Cup in 2003. In the next season Mourinho guided the team to victory in the Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira, to the top of the league for a second time, and won the highest honour in European club football, the UEFA Champions League.
On 2 June 2008, Mourinho was appointed the successor of Roberto Mancini at Internazionale on a three-year contract, and brought along with him much of his backroom staff who had served him at both Chelsea and Porto. He chose Giuseppe Baresi, a former Inter player and ex-head coach of their youth academy, as his assistant. He spoke solely in Italian in his first press conference as Inter boss, claiming to have learnt it «in three weeks.» Mourinho stated that he only intended to make a few major signings in the summer. By the end of the transfer window, he had brought three new players to the side: Brazilian winger Mancini (€13 million), Ghanaian midfielder Sulley Muntari for reported €14 million, and Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma for a cash/player exchange fee of €18.6 million plus young Portuguese midfielder Pelé. On 28 May 2010, it was confirmed that Mourinho would take over from Manuel Pellegrini at the Santiago Bernabéu. On 31 May 2010, Mourinho was unveiled as the new manager of Real Madrid after signing a four-year deal at the club, and became the 11th coach in the past seven years at Real Madrid. After leaving his job as a school coach, Mourinho looked for paths into professional management in his hometown and became youth team coach at Vitória de Setúbal in the early 1990s. Working his way up the ladder, he accepted the position of assistant manager at Estrela da Amadora, then was a scout at Ovarense. Mourinho yearned for greater challenges and in 1992 an opportunity arose to work as a translator for a top foreign coach. Sir Bobby Robson had been appointed as the new manager of Lisbon club Sporting Clube de Portugal and the Englishman required a local coach with a good command of English to work as his interpreter.
He began working with Robson's successor, Louis van Gaal, and he learnt much from the Dutchman's conscientious style. Both assistant and head coach combined their studious approach to the game and Barcelona won La Liga twice in van Gaal's first two years as coach. Van Gaal saw that his number two had the promise to be more than a skilled assistant. He let Mourinho develop his own independent coaching style and entrusted him with the coaching duties of FC Barcelona B. Van Gaal also let Mourinho take charge of the first team (acting as Mourinho's assistant himself) for certain trophies, like the Copa Catalunya, which Mourinho won in 2000. When asked about all the missed opportunities against Levante in La Liga and Auxerre in the UEFA Champions League, Mourinho said: "One day some poor rival is going to pay for the chances we've missed today." The following match at the Santiago Bernabéu ended with a 6:1 victory over Deportivo La Coruña. The following league games confirmed Mourinho's statement, defeating Málaga by 1:4 and Racing Santander again by 6:1.
Mourinho met his wife Matilde Tami Faria, born in Angola, when they were teenagers in Setúbal, Portugal, and the couple married in 1989. Their first child, daughter Matilde, was born in 1996 and they had their first son, José Mário, Jr., four years later. Mourinho, whilst dedicated to football, describes his family as the centre of his life and has noted that the «most important thing is my family and being a good father». He was selected as the New Statesman Man of the Year 2005 and was described as a man devoted to both his family and his work. Mourinho has also been a part of social initiatives and charity work, helping with a youth project, bringing Israeli and Palestinian children together through football and donating his "lucky" jacket to Tsunami Relief, earning £22,000 for the charity. José Mourinho is a Catholic.
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