Jose Mourinho

José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix

José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix was born in 1963 to a large middle-class family in Setúbal, Portugal.

From an early age, football was a major part of Mourinho's life. As a teenager, Mourinho travelled to attend his father's weekend matches and when his father had became a coach, Mourinho began observing training sessions and scouting opposing teams.

Mourinho is regarded by some players, coaches, and critics as one of the best football coaches of all time. 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 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. Mourinho moved to Chelsea the following year and won the Premier League title, ending a fifty-year-old drought, and the League Cup that season. In his second year he won the Community Shield and again the Premier League. He managed the cup double in 2007, winning the FA Cup and League Cup. 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 early in his fourth season there allegedly after a series of disagreements with the club's chairman Roman Abramovich.

In 2008 he moved to Italy's Serie A, signing a three-year contract with Internazionale. Within three months he had won his first Italian honour, the Supercoppa Italiana, and completed the season by winning the Serie A league title. Mourinho followed the next season by winning the first treble in Italian history, the Serie A league title, Coppa Italia, and the UEFA Champions League, the first time Inter had won in forty-five years, thus becoming the third manager in football history to win two 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 championships.

Love him or hate him!