No careful observer of Real Madrid should have been shocked by Jose Mourinho’s return, thirteen years after he left in a storm of acrimony with one La Liga title to his name. After all, Florentino Perez’s contacts book contains the names of just three coaches, with only one entry between A and Z. Periodically, Real Madrid’s democratically elected oligarch has been persuaded that the club would benefit from new coaching blood and has almost instantly regretted it every time.
“This new guy is no good. The players don’t like change. When can I call Ancelotti?”
“He’s busy, boss.”
“Okay, get me Zidane!”
When you have worked through the impossible options, ruling out another innovator or internally promoted rookie, you are left to face the improbable. So here we are – Jose is back.
And what, you might ask, is wrong with that? Fancy, innovative coaches don’t work at Real Madrid. The challenge is too complex for a systems man. Both Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane – Perez’s winners – were pragmatists. Their football was appealing but they ultimately adapted to meet the strengths of their charges, rather than demanding the opposite. That’s the beauty of great players: you don’t need a complicated system to get them playing great football. And, in case you missed it, Real Madrid have been Champions of Europe fifteen times.
Mourinho is not quite cut from the same cloth as Ancelotti and Zidane and his last tenure at the Bernebeu was a rickety rollercoaster. He is, like them, a pragmatist, but the success he enjoyed in his pomp came from his ability to persuade world class players to work in a basic defend-and-counter structure in key games. On his way to his second Champions League, Mourinho’s Inter knocked Pep Guardiola’s great Barcelona team out of the Champions League with 14% possession and Samuel Eto’o operating as a second left-back.
The best and worst result of his first spell at Real Madrid was the 5-0 rout in the Clasico in November 2010. It was a historically, infamously, appalling result, but it created a licence to bring to Madrid a style that had served Mourinho so productively at Porto, Chelsea and Inter. He had his narrative. Barca weren’t just nefarious and sneaky (always accepted in Madrid) but, let’s face it, better at playing the new style positional, possession-based football. It was Mourinho’s way – or a long phase of humiliation.
It worked, after a fashion. The real ugliness of Mourinho’s Madrid Part One was off the pitch; its nadir was a weird, cowardly eye-gouge on Barca’s assistant coach Tito Vilanova as a mass scuffle followed a horrible challenge by Marcelo on Cesc Fabregas. Its zenith was when his second season title winning side amassed 100 points and 121 goals.
In his third season, the ugliness was bouncing around inside the Bernabeu and at the media and frankly anyone else. Relationships between the coach and key players ruptured and his departure was no surprise. Those were the days of Mourinho’s third season syndrome when his reservoir of charm evaporated into churlishness and spite. He didn’t win the Champions League with Real Madrid; the full restoration of glory was left to Ancelotti and Zidane.
Mourinho is the top of nobody’s list of ‘Best Football Coaches in the World 2026.’ But there is a widely expressed belief that Real Madrid’s pampered dilettantes need a blast of cold disciplinary wind after they spoiled Ancelotti’s later days and wrecked the Xabi Alonso project before it really started. Perhaps two trophyless seasons can act as the same catalyst as the November 2010 Clasico. Everyone from fans to the media to the players and even the President will have to accept the need for structure. The time for Real Madrid ad-libbing their way to glory is over, for now.
Is Mourinho the man to deliver? He hasn’t won a league title since Chelsea’s in 2014/15. The world moved on around him. Football was about possession and attacking style and defensive dinosaurs like Mourinho and Rafael Benitez were left to scrap over the Europa League. He couldn’t get Fenerbahce into the Champions League, and the club president blamed the dull football rather than poor results for Mourinho’s departure after just 14 months.
Real Madrid fans saw for themselves Mourinho’s high-point at Benfica – the extraordinarily dramatic goal by goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin that got the Portuguese into the knockout play-offs where they again met their coach’s once and future club. That tie was overshadowed by Gianluca Prestianni’s abuse of Vinicius Junior. Mourinho’s bizarre reaction to Prestianni’s actions was him at his charmless, defensive worst and will need some smoothing over when he takes up his new post. He essentially blamed the victim, questioning Vini’s celebration and asking why trouble followed the Brazilian from ground to ground. All Alonso had done was ask him to do a bit of closing down.
Benfica finished their domestic season unbeaten but trophyless, drawing 11 of 34 league games. I don’t watch Portuguese football, but I read that Mourinho’s side didn’t fail for a lack of willingness to attack. His formations and outlook were new and updated but ultimately unsuccessful as Porto scored fewer goals but accumulated more points.
Mourinho’s record in the past decade is reasonable, decent, fine. It is not the record of a coach who would catch the eye of the world’s richest and most successful club. He is a less appealing hire than Alonso was a year ago. Alonso had had more recent success, Real Madrid credentials – and then he won his first Clasico. It still wasn’t enough. The big names moaned and flounced, and Perez took their side, sacking the coach halfway through the season with the team four points behind Barcelona. Alonso’s failure was the failure to manage egos: the players’ and the President’s.
In Perez’s reign there has been one way to manage Real Madrid: pragmatic, player pleasing. It has delivered success in Europe, but they have massively underperformed in La Liga – unless you buy Perez’s delusion that they have been robbed of seven titles. Whatever Barcelona paid Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira for, he didn’t have the power to deliver seven titles. Seven La Liga championships in 23 seasons is a poor return for Florentino’s dominance.
His autocracy and conservatism have limited the scope of success. Mourinho hasn’t come to change that. He is an old rock star hoping for one more hit. Can it work? Perhaps. After all, Mikel Arteta’s success with Arsenal has shown that pragmatism isn’t dead: without a special team to beat them, a well-drilled unit can still thrive. If Mourinho wants to go back to his counterattacking principles in big games, who better to deliver than Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius? At 63, Mourinho has lost some of his vigour, but he will still feed the media machine with a mixture of love and hate.
We all know never to write off Real Madrid, right? A club that big, with that memory of success and ability to attract extraordinary talent is always one or two smart moves from glory. Florentino is going nowhere, even at 79, so the cycle will continue to turn and, who knows, Mourinho might shake a trophy out of a squad of wonderfully talented stars. It won’t be a revolution – but none of us was expecting that.
