Jose Mourinho, The Special One, The Game, The Maestro

Jose Mourinho, The Special One, won the FIFA Coach of the Year award for 2010. He is currently the coach of Real Madrid FC, last year won everything with Internazionale and if we take a look at what he achieved in the last 10 years, I would say the nickname “The Special One” is fitting.

Mourinho, who studied sports science at the Technical University of Lisbon, always wanted to become a coach. The big break came for him when Sir Bobby Robson was appointed the coach of a Lisbon club "Sporting Clube de Portugal". There he worked as an interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson and soon become very close to him. He and Sir Robson discussed many coaching techniques and he followed Sir Robson to Porto and later to FC Barcelona. Now as he coaches Real Madrid, the fans of Barcelona still taunt him as the interpreter.

Then when Robson left Barcelona, Mourinho stayed there and started working with Robson’s successor Louis van Gaal. Van Gaal was also impressed by the young Portuguese’s talent and let him take the charge of the first team for certain competitions like the Copa Catalunya, which he won in 2000.

Let’s fast forward a bit and move to the year 2002 when he took charge of Porto as the Head coach. In 2003 He won the Portuguese liga as well as the UEFA cup (currently known as Europa League). The year 2004 was even better as Porto secured the league title 5 weeks before the end of the season and won the biggest prize of European Football, The UEFA Champions League.

Then he was hired by Roman Abramovich to become the coach of Chelsea. His success continued as he won the League cup and the premier league title that year (Back to back premier league title in 2005 and 2006). However, his relationship with the owner became sour and eventually he left Chelsea in 2007.

Then after a long break he took the job of coaching Internazionale. It looked the same as before and Mourinho won the Serie A that year. And his biggest achievement came in 2009-10 season when he won all three cups, Serie A, Italian super cup as well as the UEFA Champions league. Something that was never achieved by any Italian club before.

However, Many times Mourinho made the headline of newspapers not for winning cups but for his controversial comments.

Here are a few comments,

After winning Champions league with Porto, Mourinho preferred coaching Liverpool FC more than Chelsea,

“Liverpool is a team that interests everyone and Chelsea does not interest me so much because it is a new project with lots of money invested in it. I think it is a project which, if the club fails to win everything, then [Roman] Abramovich could retire and take the money out of the club. It's an uncertain project. It is interesting for a coach to have the money to hire quality players but you never know if a project like this will bring success”.

Liverpool gave the job to Rafael Benitez. Considering the current situation (December, 2010) of Liverpool FC now, anyone would say that was certainly a BIG DECISION.

After this year’s Ballon D’or was given to Messi, the Spanish press was furious why it was not given to Xavi or Iniesta. Mourinho said about Iniesta,

“If the winner is Andres Iniesta, who unhappily was not able to play for the first five months of the year because of injury, but after that played six matches and scored a goal in South Africa, then anything can happen in the year of a World Cup final and the rest counts for nothing.”

Mourinho about what he learned from Sir Bobby Robson,

“One of the most important things I learnt from Bobby Robson is that when you win, you shouldn't assume you are the team, and when you lose, you shouldn’t think you are rubbish.”

At the time in Chelsea,

“Everybody was waiting for Chelsea not to win every game and one day, when we lose, there will be a holiday in the country. But we are ready for that.”

After Chelsea beat Manchester United 1-0 in Mourinho’s first game as manager,

“I told Mr Ferguson United didn’t deserve to leave with nothing”.

After moving to Porto, “I am absolutely sure that we will be champions next season.” Which he did of course.

Jose Mourinho's coaching philosophy is quite unique and sophisticated. He likes to get close to his players and have a close contact with all his players. He does not depend much on others and is always present in the practice sessions. He is the first coach to introduce advanced scientific methods in fitness training to reduce injury risks to players. He is a master tactician and is highly efficient to motivate his players. His ability to speak in five different languages helps him to motivate his players better. And when addressing the team, he always uses the language of the country of the club. It is to create an atmosphere around the players to make them feel for the club and start loving it more.

You don't see Mourinho's players giving up before the end of the match. He kept an unbeaten home run record for more than 9 years. The unbeaten run came to an end on April 2, 2011 as Real lost 0-1 to Sporting Gijon at the Bernabeu.

The game and the controversy are not over yet. He is still coaching and we don’t need an astrologist to predict that he will win many more titles and of course will make many controversial but in some way making sense comments.

I must say I am a big fan of Jose Mourinho and this hub can be biased by that. Fan or no Fan, one thing is sure, for what he achieved in his career, he sure is worthy of respect and honor and is in the same level as Sir Alex Ferguson.