The Special One
Today we place Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho in the spotlight, looking at his achievements and respect level within the professional game of football.
Jose Mourinho shot into the football media limelight after guiding Porto to a Champions League victory and has mantained his position within the most highly respected managers ever since that moment.
Following his success at Porto, the manager attracted the attention of London based, Premier League side Chelsea who drafted the extrovert manager into their hotseat after parting company with a number of managers in a short time scale.
Mourinho didn’t need much convincing to make the move to the English football leagues after the Premier League became recognised as the best football league in the world.
Calling himself ‘The Special One’, Mourinho has always been confident in his abilities as a manager to not only get results but to also further the development of leading players to bring them into the media spotlight for all the right reasons.
Mourinho brought a new lease of life to the Chelsea camp and the results on the field were effected massively, the confident manager managing to win the league within his first season in charge of the team.
A look at the performances show that the players where pulling out all the stops to impress their manager and the results show a huge indication that the desire to impress Mr Mourinho worked for the team.
After steering Chelsea to a number of finals and winning cups and leagues with the squad, he was then approached by present club Real Madrid, a club that Mourinho had always said he would like to be in charge of, with the Spanish giants jumping on those comments to offer the manager their newly vacant post.
Mourinho accepted the offer and took charge at the club, considered to be one of the biggest clubs in Spain and instantly began to try to make improvements to the team, capturing a number of high profile signings from all over the world and smashing the player transfer fee record when he captured Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo’s signature after as huge ¬£80m offer.
Not content on simply spending £80m on one player, Mourinho continued his assault on some of the biggest teams in the footballing world, capturing signings such as Kaka, the Brazilian playmaker for £60m only a number of days before revealing Cristiano Ronaldo to the fans.
Although the club has had its tough times, Mourinho seems to have tried to bring a new regime in at the club, trying to make a team that was made of of individuals back into a world class team of players, something that is not an easy task when you look at the selection headaches that the manager must experience on a regular basis.
The managers start to the Spanish season with his new team has been hard but he has still been able to get the results that both the fans and the board demand from him and the team seems to be coming together a little more than they were last season.
Although Mourinho is happy within his role as manager at Real Madrid, the close of last season saw him telling the media that he will return to England at some point in his career in order to get the taste of English football again, something that has raised speculation that he could be waiting for rival Sir Alex ferguson to take his final bow as manager at Manchester United.
