Self-confident, successful, wealthy, good-looking - the only thing José Mourinho has ever failed at is playing the game he now manages so skilfully, writes Andrew Fifield
England's Premiership football managers have been attempting to know their enemy for more than a year now, but time has taught them that the only thing harder than beating José Mourinho is understanding him. Even Tami, his wife of 16 years, admits to being mystified.
"He's never one for expressing his feelings much," she said, "so I've learned to decodify him, sometimes through a gesture, an expression or a look. That's how I know what he thinks."
Mourinho seems to revel in his status as an enigma - the mysterious former school teacher who has propelled himself to the top of the footballing hierarchy in double-quick time. One of his players, Chelsea and Republic of Ireland winger Damien Duff, perhaps came closest to pinning him down when he said: "He's the best manager in the world. People watch Match of the Day just for him."
And therein lies his dual fascination. On the one hand, there is Mourinho the manager: the brilliant strategist who won the Champions League with unfancied FC Porto in 2004 and then took the Premiership title in his first season with Chelsea. But there is also Mourinho the man: sometimes charming, invariably outspoken but always supremely self-confident. The sort of guy who, as Duff pointed out, makes pub-goers drain their drinks early in order to watch his post-match musings.
The interest in Mourinho is particularly acute because he is that rarest of creatures: an outsider who broke into professional football's inner sanctum. Although his father, Felix, played as a goalkeeper and also managed, Mourinho's playing career constitutes perhaps the only failure he has had to endure.
"I soon realised I wasn't going to make it," he said. "But I was in a family with a comfortable situation so I had choices. I always believed that I could be a very good coach."
Even as a child José Mario Santos Felix had shown a flair for the managerial art. Apocryphal stories swirl around his home town of Setúbal, the most fantastical involving his attempt to line up 10 neighbourhood dogs in a 4-4-2 formation. There was a degree in sports science and a period teaching physical education to school children, but once Mourinho had placed his first foot on football's career ladder his ascent was astonishingly swift.
He began as an interpreter for Bobby Robson at Sporting Lisbon and Porto, before following his mentor to Barcelona in 1996. Robson feared that his skinny assistant would be an easy target for the club's high-profile stars. He was wrong.
"You should have seen him with Ronaldo," said Robson. "He listened to José. It didn't matter that José had done nothing as a player. He knew how to talk to him." Mourinho spoke to Ronaldo as a teacher would speak to his star pupil, and the Brazilian flourished. The coach used that ability to draw the best out of players in leading Porto to the league and cup double, and the Uefa Cup, in his first full season in charge in 2003.
HOWEVER, IT WAS not until February 2004 that Mourinho shot to prominence outside his native country. En route to Porto's notable 2-1 first leg victory over Manchester United in a Champions League tie, he infuriated Sir Alex Ferguson - football's equivalent of Don Corleone - with his team's play-acting on the pitch.
"I understand why he is emotional," said Mourinho post-match. "You would be sad if your team got dominated by opponents who have been built with 10 per cent of your budget." Mourinho's flair for creeping under the skin of his adversaries was confirmed when a decisive late equaliser in the return leg at Old Trafford prompted him to sprint the length of the touchline in celebration, all billowing coat and flailing arms. You could almost hear Ferguson's blood vessels popping.
Ironically, the 42-year-old Mourinho now treats Ferguson with the same deference that the apprentice reserves for the sorcerer, but his readiness to spar with the Scot proved that here was a man not easily cowed. The extent of his self-belief became clear when he replaced the affable but ineffective Claudio Ranieri as Chelsea manager in June 2004. "If I wanted to have an easy job I would have stayed at Porto - beautiful blue chair, the Champions League trophy, God, and after God, me. I believe I am a special one."
It was an extraordinary entrance. Mourinho's words turned him into a figure of almost mythical grandeur, although he was not the first to attempt such a metamorphosis. Bill Shankly's pithy put-downs and steely self-belief ensured that his personal star shone almost as brightly as Liverpool's in the 1970s, while Brian Clough was quipping his way onto the back pages before Mourinho was even in his teens.
BUT MOURINHO IS different. He does not need to rely on a whiplash tongue to become more than just a football manager. Swarthy good looks and natty dress sense are bankable attributes in themselves and the result is that Mourinho has become football management's first poster boy.
He has endorsement deals with Portuguese bank BPI and American Express for a combined sum of €1 million a year, and last week he signed a four-year contract worth €4.3 million with Adidas. With a €7.57 million annual salary thrown in for good measure, his yearly earnings total more than €10 million. "José is charismatic and at the top of his game," explained an Adidas spokesman. "He's a very driven, stylish individual and very good at what he does."
Mourinho would doubtless agree, but he is no insatiable egotist. Behind the stylish stubble and swept-back hair, he is fiercely private. Before accepting the Porto job he returned to Setúbal to remove all photographs of himself from the family home in an attempt to deflect media intrusions. That may be at odds with his courting the limelight, but here is a man who understands that the greater the focus on the manager, the less pressure is on his players.
One of Mourinho's favourite anecdotes proves his point. In March 2003 he took Porto to Lisbon club Benfica, who he had briefly managed the previous year. "I knew that I would get a thunderous reception in the negative sense, so I decided to go on the pitch alone before the team. There were 80,000 booing me but I think that, when we're mentally strong, the effect that people are seeking - to intimidate and unsettle - is missed. I felt like the most important person in the world. And in offloading that against me, they spared the team."
That devotion to his players is met in kind. Chelsea striker Didier Drogba has said he would play for Mourinho "on a broken leg", while Porto's Carlos Secretario has lauded his former manager's "brilliant human qualities. He knows how to extract everything a player has."
Mourinho shuns the "hairdryer" approach to man-management, a legacy of the old school, and instead treats his team as an extension of his family.
Yet there is also a technical expertise to Mourinho's work. His university education has given him an academic's enthusiasm for research and report-writing, with every training session meticulously chronicled in a "bible" never to be made public. Before each game, his players are handed a dossier detailing their specific duties, while pre-match briefings include Powerpoint presentations which surgically dissect the opposition's game plan.
DESPITE HIS ADMIRABLE qualities, a hint of a darker side of Mourinho was glimpsed following a spiteful clash with Barcelona last season. After losing the first game at the Catalans' Camp Nou stadium, Mourinho accused the Swedish referee Anders Frisk of being in cahoots with his opposite number Frank Rijkaard. Frisk subsequently received death threats from Chelsea fans and retired, while Mourinho was charged with bringing the game into disrepute by Uefa. The Frisk affair, together with the guilty verdict delivered against Mourinho for approaching the Arsenal full-back Ashley Cole without his club's permission (Mourinho is appealing) have left a stain.
Amid all the furore, the one person who never lost his cool was Mourinho himself. He has the ability to detach and to keep football firmly in perspective after he was twice touched by personal tragedy - his sister died while he was still a young man, while his 20-year-old nephew succumbed to lung cancer two months ago. Mourinho is also devoted to his two children, Matilde and José Jr, and is a devout Catholic, even going so far as to kiss an icon of the Virgin Mary during matches.
"When we first saw him do it we were surprised," said Eugenio Queiros, a Portuguese journalist. "But it just seems normal now." Not that there is much normal about José. This is a family man who will stop at nothing to protect his players. A former sports teacher who gatecrashed the exclusive party at the top of professional football. The ruthlessly driven and relentlessly successful coach who is terrified by the possibility of failure. Even losing the FA Community Shield showpiece to Arsenal tomorrow is unthinkable.
"I know football very well," he said. "I was nine when my father was sacked on Christmas Day, in the middle of lunch." It is unlikely Felix's son will ever share that fate.