Jose Mourinho’s three-year stint at Real Madrid in the early 2010s will go down as one of the most polarizing periods in the club’s history. The Special One coached a record breaking team which sowed the seeds to some of the greatest individual football careers of the decade.
The breath-taking counter-attacking football enticed the fans and Florentino Perez’s superstars shined with grandeur.
Mourinho’s perfectionist persona pushed even the very best to the limits and his character combined with his charisma defined the successes of that Real Madrid team, one for the ages.
Yet – like most chapters in Mourinho’s iconic career – the Real Madrid story too ended in disastrous fashion.
The arrival of The Special One at Real Madrid
Simply put, Florentino Perez’s return to presidency in 2009 coincided with a period of growing domestic and continental dominance for rivals Barcelona. After having crashed out of the Champions League in the Round of 16 five seasons in a row, many thought it was time for Real Madrid to move away from the likes of Fabio Capello and Manuel Pellegrini to fill the managerial void at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Mourinho was someone with past history at Barcelona, having worked at the club at various coaching positions and as translator during the times of Sir Bobby Robson.
In 2008, Mourinho had also been in the running for the Barcelona job but the Catalan giants ended up appointing Pep Guardiola instead. The Portuguese coach’s Inter Milan side had also most recently knocked the Blaugrana out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage.
That famous win solidified Mourinho’s reputation as the perfect antithesis to Guardiola’s Barcelona side – both in terms of strategy and temperament.
As reported by ESPN, Mourinho had said in the aftermath of Inter Milan’s Champions League triumph in 2010:
"“If you don’t coach Real Madrid then you always have a gap in your career.”"
Mourinho was quick to project his influence on what was a Galactico team. The Portuguese took charge of a squad that’d already shown major signs of promise in the previous season, having signed the likes of Kaka, Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo, Xabi Alonso and a few others.
While the others were classic Galactico signings, Alonso belonged to the profile of non-superstar maestros Perez didn’t sign in his first stint as president.
Mourinho’s arrival saw Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira and Angel Di Maria join. All of these players proved crucial to Real Madrid’s success in the years to come, all going on to have incredible careers. In what was a bold move at the time, club legends Raul Gonzalez and Guti Hernandez were shown the exit door.