José Mário dos Santos Mourinho, is a Portuguese professional football manager and former player who was most recently head coach of Italian Serie A club Roma. 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.
After an uneventful career as a midfielder in the Portuguese leagues, playing most of the time in the reserves' non-league games while playing for Portuguese First Division clubs, and then in the Portuguese second and third divisions where he would end his playing career at 24, Mourinho moved into coaching, first as an interpreter for 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 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 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 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. 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. Remaining in England, he was appointed at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur respectively, but his tenure at both clubs were relatively short-lived and ended acrimoniously. Despite this, Mourinho 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, where he was fired less than a week before the final was scheduled to be played. He was soon hired by Roma and won the inaugural UEFA Europa Conference League — this made him the first manager to win a major European competition with four clubs and the third manager to win the three main UEFA club competitions.
He was named Portuguese Coach of the Century by the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) in 2015, and was the first coach to spend more than £1 billion on transfers. 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.
