José Mário dos Santos Félix Mourinho (born 26 January 1963 in Setúbal) is a Portuguese football manager and the current manager of Real Madrid. He has the nickname "The Special One". Mourinho is regarded by some players and coaches as the best ever coach in football.Mourinho started out as a player but he was unable to forge a meaningful career in the game and eventually switched to management. After spells working as an assistant manager and a youth team coach in the early 1990s, he became an interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson. There he worked with him at Sporting Clube de Portugal and Porto in Portugal, before following him to Spanish club Barcelona. He remained in the Catalonian club after Robson's departure and worked with the successor, Louis van Gaal.
He began focusing on coaching and impressed with brief but successful managerial periods at Benfica and União de Leiria. He returned to Porto in 2002, this time as head coach, winning the Primeira Liga, Taça de Portugal, and UEFA Cup in 2003. In 2004 Mourinho guided the team 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 two consecutive Premier League titles in 2005 and 2006. 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.
In mid-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 his first season in Italy by winning the Serie A league title. Mourinho followed on from that the next season by winning the first treble in Italian history, the Serie A league title, Coppa Italia, and the UEFA Champions League, thus becoming the third manager in football history to win two UEFA Champions League with two different teams, after Ernst Happel and Ottmar Hitzfeld. Due to these achievements he won the first ever FIFA Ballon d'Or Best Coach Award in 2010.
On 28 May 2010, his appointment as head coach at Real Madrid was confirmed, signing a four-year contract. His first honour with the team was winning the 2011 Copa del Rey Final, the first time Madrid had won the competition since 1993.
José Mário dos Santos Félix Mourinho was born in 1963 to a large middle-class family in Setúbal, Portugal, the son of Félix Mourinho and wife Maria Júlia Carrajola dos Santos. His father played football professionally for Os Belenenses and Vitória de Setúbal, earning one cap for Portugal in the course of his career. His mother was a primary school teacher from an affluent background; her uncle funded the construction of the Vitória de Setúbal football stadium. The fall of António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo regime in April 1974, however, led to the family losing all but a single property in nearby Palmela.Mourinho was a popular and competitive child and his mother encouraged him to be successful in his endeavors. Football was a major part of his life and his father recalled being very impressed with his knowledge of the game. Footballing commitments in Porto and Lisbon meant that Félix was often separated from his son. Still, the young Mourinho managed to spend time with him and as a teenager he would travel by any means necessary to attend weekend matches. By this time, his father had changed from player to coach and in turn the José Mourinho became a student of the game, observing training sessions and scouting opposing teams.
Mourinho wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father by becoming a footballer and so he joined the Belenenses youth team. Graduating to the senior level, he played at Rio Ave (where his father was coach), Belenenses, and Sesimbra, but it became evident that he would not excel as a professional due to a lack of the requisite pace and power. Acceding to his shortcomings, he chose to pursue the dream of becoming a professional football coach instead. His mother had different ideas altogether and enrolled him in a business school. Mourinho attended the school but dropped out on his first day, deciding he would rather focus on sport, and chose to attend the Instituto Superior de Educação Física (ISEF), Technical University of Lisbon, to study sports science. He taught physical education at various schools and after five years, he had earned his diploma, receiving consistently good marks throughout the course. After attending coaching courses held by the English and Scottish Football Associations, former Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh took note of the young Portuguese's drive and attention to detail. Mourinho sought to redefine the role of coach in football by mixing coaching theory with motivational and psychological techniques.
