José Mourinho

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. In addition to playing for the reserves, Mourinho was usually tasked with scouting other teams for his father. 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. 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. 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 Clube Desportivo de Vila Franca, an amateur club from Vila Franca do Campo, São Miguel Island, Azores. With Belenenses 8–0 up at half-time, Mourinho came on as a second-half substitute and scored a hat-trick as the team…

After leaving his job as a physical education school teacher, Mourinho looked for a path into professional football management in his hometown and became youth team coach at Vitória de Setúbal in the early 1990s. Later, he accepted the position of assistant manager at Estrela da Amadora, then was a scout at Ovarense. Then, in 1992, an opportunity arose to work as a translator for a top foreign coach: Bobby Robson had been appointed as the new manager of Lisbon club Sporting CP and needed an English-speaking local coach to work as his interpreter. His presentation was on 7 July, alongside president Sousa Cintra, manager Robson and Manuel Fernandes. Mourinho began discussing tactics and coaching with Robson in his interpreting role. Robson was sacked by the club in December 1993. When Porto appointed him as their head coach, Mourinho moved with him, continuing to coach and interpret for players at the new club. The Porto team, consisting of players like Ljubinko Drulović, Domingos, Rui Barros, Jorge Costa and Vítor Baía, went on to dominate Portuguese football the following years. With Robson as head coach and Mourinho as his assistant, Porto reached the 1993–94 UEFA Champions League semi-finals and won the 1993–94 Taça de Portugal, the 1994–95 and 1995–96 Portuguese championship, and the 1994, 1995 and 1996 Portuguese Super Cup, the latter with a 5–0 victory over arch-rivals Benfica, in what proved to be Robson's last game at Porto, earning Robson the nickname "Bobby Five-O"…

Benfica

The chance to become a top-tier manager arrived in September 2000 when Mourinho was appointed as the replacement for Benfica manager Jupp Heynckes after the fourth week of the Primeira Liga.

When I spoke with Van Gaal about going back to Portugal to be an assistant at Benfica, he said: "No, don't go. Tell Benfica if they want a first-team coach you will go; if they want an assistant you will stay." The Benfica hierarchy wanted to appoint Jesualdo Ferreira as the new assistant coach, but Mourinho refused and picked Carlos Mozer, a retired Benfica defender, as his right-hand man instead. Mourinho was highly critical of Ferreira, whom he had first encountered as his teacher at ISEF and later lambasted the veteran coach by stating, "This could be the story of a donkey who worked for 30 years but never became a horse." Only weeks after being given the job at Benfica, Mourinho's mentor, Bobby Robson, offered him the assistant manager's role at Newcastle United. Such was Robson's desperation for Mourinho to join him he offered to step down after two years in charge and hand over the reins to Mourinho. Mourinho turned the offer down and said he knew Robson would never step down at the club he loved. Mourinho and Mozer proved a popular combination, enjoying a 3–0 win against rivals Sporting CP in December. Their reign appeared to be at risk after Benfica's election turned against club president João Vale e Azevedo and the newly elected Manuel Vilarinho said that he…

Mourinho was born in 1963 into a large middle-class family in Setúbal, Portugal, as the son of goalkeeper José Manuel Mourinho Félix, who was known by the name Félix Mourinho, and primary school teacher Maria Júlia Carrajola dos Santos. His father played football professionally for Vitória de Setúbal and Belenenses, earning one cap for Portugal in 1972, and later worked as a football manager and the club director of Vitória de Setúbal. His mother was raised by her uncle Mário Lêdo, who came to control the Setúbal sardine canning industry under António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo and funded the construction of Vitória's Estádio do Bonfim in 1953–1961. Following the regime's downfall in the Carnation Revolution, Lêdo's assets were nationalised during the short-lived Ongoing Revolutionary Process in 1975, but he kept a mansion in Aires near Palmela, where Mourinho grew up with his parents.

Education

Mourinho failed in the subject of mathematics during the final year of secondary school and this prevented him from finishing high school in time to enroll at the physical education college as was his wish. After finishing secondary school in the special examination period of September, his mother enrolled him in a private business school because there were no vacant seats for him in the physical education college and his mother believed business school would bring him to a more successful career path. Mourinho dropped out of business school on his first day,…