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Could Jose Mourinho rekindle past glories at Real Madrid? Or is he just yesterday’s man?

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Even at the worst of times, sacked by Tottenham Hotspur, AS Roma and Fenerbahce, finding himself back on the Europa League circuit or worse, one route back to the top table remained open for Jose Mourinho.

Through it all — the past nine years that have yielded a solitary trophy, the 10 years he went without winning a Champions League knockout tie, the 11 years he has gone without even coming close to a domestic league title — the possibility of a reunion with Real Madrid lingered, an old flame that still flickered away somewhere in the background.

His tenure in Madrid, between 2010 and 2013, was turbulent even by Mourinho standards, but Madrid president Florentino Perez still carried a torch for him, long after others among European football’s elite had dismissed him as yesterday’s man.

The prospect of a return to Madrid, as he approaches a break clause in his contract at Benfica, is fascinating in the context of Mourinho’s career arc. From the hip young gunslinger leading FC Porto, Chelsea and Internazionale to huge success, to the blood feud with Pep Guardiola and Barcelona during those streetfighting years in Madrid, to the bittersweet second spell at Chelsea and the diminishing returns over a decade spent drifting joylessly from Manchester United to Tottenham to Roma to Fenerbahce to Benfica … and now back to the Bernabeu? It feels like a morality tale where the anti-hero gets one last shot at happiness, one last chance to show the world he has been wronged.

As Real Madrid coach, Jose Mourinho had an intense rivalry with Barcelona’s Pep Guardiola (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)

It is also intriguing from a Madrid perspective. How, from what looked like a position of rare stability as well as familiar success after winning yet another Champions League title under Carlo Ancelotti in 2024, has the biggest club in world football lost its way so badly over the past two years that turning to Mourinho has become, in the eyes of Perez, the only viable option?

The sense of dysfunction detailed here by The Athletic here, after a series of clashes at the training ground in the build-up to this weekend’s clasico against Barcelona, is alarming. The training-ground scrap between Federico Valverde and Aurelien Tchouameni was the nadir in a season marked by one episode after another as first Xabi Alonso and then Alvaro Arbeloa have tried and failed to impose discipline over the squad.

In that context, after a second consecutive season in which a richly talented group of players have fallen well short in both La Liga and the Champions League, Perez has decided it is time for a disciplinarian, a coach who will rule that dressing room with a rod of iron, hence Mourinho.

But does Perez really know what he wants? He appointed Alonso last summer, apparently convinced that his former Spain midfielder’s success with Bayer Leverkusen was something that could be replicated at the Bernabeu, but the president abandoned this “new project” at almost the first sign of trouble. He caused outrage across Spain by taking the national team coach Julen Lopetegui on the eve of the World Cup in 2018, but gave up on that after 138 days. The coaches who have thrived at 21st-century Madrid have been quieter, less intense, less interventionist types: Vicente Del Bosque, Carlo Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane.

At Real Madrid, the perception is that superstar players, like Kylian Mbappe, hold the real power (Jose Manuel Alvarez Rey/Getty Images)

This is the world that Perez has created. Players are placed on a pedestal — that first wave of galacticos in the early 2000s (led by Raul Gonzalez, Roberto Carlos, Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and David Beckham), the next wave that arrived at the start of Perez’s second term as president (led by Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Alonso and Karim Benzema) and the new generation of stars led by Rodrygo, Vinicius Junior, Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe) — and coaches are seen but far less often heard.

That is the culture in which Mourinho fought to impose his authority in his first spell in Madrid. The biggest confrontations came with Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos, but he also clashed with Cristiano Ronaldo, Benzema and others. And as with the other battles he engaged in — with Guardiola and Barcelona, with the Spanish football authorities, with various figures behind the scenes in Madrid — the effect was corrosive. He won some of those battles in the short term, beating Guardiola’s brilliant Barcelona to the Copa del Rey in his first season and La Liga in his second, reaching three Champions League semi-finals too, but he lost the war.

At times the margins were paper-thin. But by the difficult third season — it was always a difficult third season in those days when Mourinho used to sail through the first two — it had become clear to all concerned that he and his players had become sick of the sight of each other. As he said in February this year, preparing to face Madrid again as coach of Benfica, it was a “tough, intense, almost violent” period.

And that was at or perhaps just beyond the peak of his powers. That was the Mourinho whose relationships with the clubs and the players he managed were whirlwind romances: Porto, Chelsea, Inter. You knew it wouldn’t last, but the ride would always be worth the fall. Madrid was the first time it was possible to wonder whether, despite those two trophy successes, hiring Mourinho had been worth all the volatility and negativity that had come with him. It would not be the last.

Over the past decade, the successes (winning the League Cup and the Europa League with Manchester United in 2017, taking them to second in the Premier League a year later, winning the Conference League with Roma in 2022) have been far outweighed by the controversies and the sense of discord that is never far away. He lasted two-and-a-half years second time around at Chelsea, two-and-a-half years at Manchester United, 17 months at Tottenham, two-and-a-half years at Roma, 14 months at Fenerbahce, eight months so far at Benfica (where he would be welcome to extend his stay if he wished). There have been ups and downs in all of those jobs. What there has not been, for over a decade, is an achievement of the type he would have thought creditable back in the days when he used to sneer at managers who came second.

Over the course of the 2010s, a decade in which football came to be defined by the free-flowing possession football of Guardiola and the counter-pressing intensity of Jurgen Klopp, the Mourinho approach went stale. Whereas Guardiola and Klopp energised their players, Mourinho seemed exasperated by a generation that he felt lacked the toughness and never-say-die-spirit of Jorge Costa at Porto, John Terry and Frank Lampard at Chelsea, Javier Zanetti and Marco Materazzi at Inter and indeed Alonso and Arbeloa, two of his most trusted lieutenants at Madrid.

So if he is to take over at Madrid next season, how will he address the challenges of managing the likes of Bellingham, Vinicius Jr and Mbappe, who have been afforded the superstar treatment since their late teens? Or Valverde and Tchouameni, whose behaviour this week led to a disciplinary hearing on Friday at which both players were fined €500,000 (£432,100; $588,520)? Or, from a different perspective, Trent Alexander-Arnold, whose creative approach to full-back play could hardly appear less suited to the Mourinho doctrine?

On the subject of Vinicius Jr, it is less than three months since he was racially abused by Benfica supporters — and, he believed at the time, by one of their players, Gianluca Prestianni — during a Champions League clash in Lisbon.

Prestianni denied the allegation and was subsequently banned by UEFA and FIFA after admitting using a homophobic (rather than racist) slur against the Madrid forward. It might not be easily forgotten by Vinicius Jr and some of his team-mates that Mourinho’s immediate response, in a post-match interview with Prime Video, was to suggest that all of this ugliness could have been avoided had Vinicius Jr not “messed with 60,000 people in this stadium”  by the way he celebrated scoring the only goal of the game.

Jose Mourinho confronts Vinicius Jr during a Champions League game earlier this season (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)

Reassuringly, sources close to Vinicius Jr, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, have indicated to The Athletic that they do not see a problem with Mourinho’s prospective appointment at Madrid. But that episode — and the PR fiasco as Benfica followed Mourinho’s lead — brought another reminder of the downside of Mourinho’s determination to fight his team’s corner at all costs. There were various instances of that in his first spell in Madrid: a siege mentality that initially galvanised his players and then spiralled out of control.

It is easy to suggest all of that is in the past and to imagine Mourinho pitching up at Madrid’s training ground in Valdebebas, saying all the right things and setting out clearly what he expects. It is easy to imagine an immediate buy-in from the club’s hierarchy, from the players, from the supporters and even from the media.

We have all seen the Mourinho cycle often enough to know how upbeat it can be initially, when he oozes charisma and an easy charm that persuades people he has mellowed with age. We have also seen it often enough to know that the real test will come once the honeymoon period is over.

The longer that has passed since his glory days, the more dated Mourinho and his methods have begun to appear. After Manchester United were knocked out of the Champions League by Sevilla in 2018, Madrid-based sports newspaper Marca likened Mourinho to “a washed-up rock star, one of those guys who goes around holiday hotels for pensioners, playing old hits on an organ with the bass and percussion playing on a tape recorder”.

That caricature seemed a little harsh at the time — to repeat, eight years ago — but those years spent slumming it in the Europa League and Conference League circuit, coaching in Turkey and now Portugal, only heightened the impression that his days at the very top of the game were well behind him.

The perfect ending to this story would have Mourinho swaggering back into the Bernabeu, rolling back the years, embracing the talent that abounds in the squad and turning an underperforming team into one that gets the basics right, performs week-in week-out and wins the biggest prizes, thriving on the right kind of competitive tension rather than undermined by petty individual agendas.

But the suspicion lingers that this apparent reunion would be doomed from its conception. If it was a mid-season firefighting appointment, a shock treatment designed to focus minds before the Champions League knockout stage, it would be understandable. But to turn to Mourinho with some kind of great cultural reset in mind, in 2026, appears questionable in the extreme. A box-office element is guaranteed. Box-office football is not.

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Motherwell: The Premiership kingmaker aiming to create Scotland’s Bodo/Glimt

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3 minutes ago

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May 9, 2026

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Motherwell’s form has tailed off after a remarkable run of one defeat and 14 clean sheets in 20 league matches that had them in scarcely believable title contention.

Despite that, Askou’s nine-month Premiership journey has felt like a linear path to success, with a European spot in touching distance.

That does not apply to his managerial career, although demands have always been sky-high.

At Danish club Horsens, where Askou experienced top-flight promotion and relegation, day one of his two-and-a-half-year spell began with him scurrying about with a bin bag because he felt the facilities were not up to standard.

Sporting director Niels Erik Sondergaard, who had signed the former Norwich and Millwall defender as a player for Esbjerg a decade earlier, appointed him.

“He felt it was a little bit dirty. He always wanted things clean and organised around him,” Sondergaard tells BBC Scotland, recalling Askou dipping in and out of bushes to collect fast food rubbish.

“As a player he was not born with the biggest talent, but he made it through dedication, hard work and mentality. This is what we saw when he was head coach. I knew he would go on to bigger things.”

Mikkel Frankoch, who played under Askou at Vendsyssel and HB Torshavn, remembers his “demanding yet understanding” former coach setting the bar during pre-season training.

“He was always running in front, showing us how it should be done,” says the Midtjylland youth coach. “He’s a guy you look up to. He’s changed the culture at every club he’s been at.”

Frankoch views Askou as a coaching inspiration but recalls being savagely dropped as Vendsyssel closed in on promotion.

“He told me some things he wasn’t happy about,” he says. “When I was playing again I had this hunger to show him. I played my best games afterwards.

“He has a good understanding of who should play and why they should play. He has an impact on players, helping them to show the best versions of themselves.”

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Premier League title race: How big is Arsenal’s advantage over Manchester City before matchweek 36?

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10 minutes ago

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May 9, 2026

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Welcome back to The Athletic’s title-race tracker, where our data and tactics writers analyse the key trends behind the two-horse race for the Premier League crown.

With just three weeks to go until the season finale on May 24, Arsenal have taken a huge step towards securing their first title in 22 years. Their comfortable 3-0 home win against Fulham last Saturday, coupled with Manchester City’s stumble at Everton on the Monday night, leaves Mikel Arteta’s side in control.

Both sides are in action this weekend, before City play their game in hand on Arsenal against visitors Crystal Palace on Wednesday. The Athletic looks at form and fixture difficulty, and checks in with the Opta supercomputer, to try to predict who will come out on top.

What has changed since the last matchweek?

Reports of Arsenal’s demise were greatly exaggerated: they have wrestled back control of the title race. The victory over Fulham, coupled with City dropping points in that 3-3 draw at Everton, has placed the north Londoners firmly back in the driving seat. They are now five points clear with three games to go (for them), although City can cut that gap to two by winning their game in hand in midweek.

After that 2-1 defeat away to City last month, Arsenal’s subsequent 1-0 home win against Newcastle United still felt like the performance of a team acutely aware of the pressure mounting around them, with the Emirates Stadium crowd’s tetchiness palpable.

That changed at the same venue last Saturday, when Arteta’s side blew Fulham away. Confidence surged further on Tuesday night, after a 1-0 victory over Spanish side Atletico Madrid secured their passage to a first Champions League final in 20 years. The nervous tension that had enveloped the Emirates was banished, replaced by a carnival atmosphere.

The mood music at City, meanwhile, is noticeably more subdued, although Jeremy Doku’s last-gasp curling equaliser on Merseyside did keep their hopes alive.

Who is looking stronger?

There is a fair argument to suggest that Arsenal’s defeat of Fulham was their most fluent attacking display of the season.

The numbers certainly back that up.

They racked up their highest xG value of the Premier League campaign, and scored three first-half goals in a league game for the first time since November 2024, easing away from Marco Silva’s side and allowing them to withdraw the likes of Bukayo Saka, Viktor Gyokeres and Declan Rice early ahead of their Champions League semi-final decider in midweek.

Saka looked back to his best on the flanks, leaving Raul Jimenez on the floor as he chopped onto his right foot and fired the ball across goal for Gyokeres to tap home the opening goal, before pitching in with a well-taken finish at the near post himself to double the lead.

But perhaps the most pleasing display came from Myles Lewis-Skelly, starting his first game in midfield this season. Only centre-back William Saliba completed more passes than the 19-year-old, while he was involved in the most possession sequences, jumping from space to space in midfield and knitting together Arsenal’s most threatening passing moves.

As we can see from the pass network below, Lewis-Skelly frequently dropped deep to pick possession up from Gabriel in central defence, and worked to progress the ball to the likes of Rice and Eberechi Eze, who drifted over to Saka’s side to help establish Arsenal’s swirling right-hand side that has made them look so dangerous under Arteta over the years.

It looked as if the shackles were off for Arsenal, and although they have the luxury of not having to rely on goal difference to seal the title anymore, they seem good value to add a few more goals before the season is out.

Up at Hill Dickinson Stadium two days later, lapses in concentration across their defence saw City’s six-game winning run grind to a halt.

Pep Guardiola’s side largely controlled the first half, seeing 76 per cent of the possession and amassing 12 shots as they headed into the break with a one-goal cushion, courtesy of Doku’s pinpoint left-footed finish.

But things quickly began to unravel after Marc Guehi underhit a back pass to goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, allowing Thierno Barry to steal in and equalise. Everton generated 82 per cent of their expected goals after the hour mark, sensing City’s vulnerability and asserting themselves physically. They packed the penalty area as Jake O’Brien rose highest to power them in front, while Merlin Rohl broke free from Mateo Kovacic in the build-up to their third.

It remains to be seen whether Doku’s 97th-minute leveller represents a significant point for City, but there is no doubt that this feels like two more dropped.

Who has the tougher upcoming schedule?

When it comes to fixtures, Arsenal hold the upper hand, at least on paper.

Based on the average Opta Power Ranking of their final games, no Premier League club have an easier run-in, with all three of Arsenal’s remaining matches coming against teams currently in the bottom six.

But motivations diverge wildly at this stage of a season, making fixture difficulty tricky to assess.

Take Fulham, Arsenal’s opponents from last Saturday. No Premier League side are more regularly accused of being “on the beach” as campaigns draw to a close. A record of just four wins from their past 18 fixtures played in May reflects a club who often end up stuck in that liminal space between European qualification and the relegation zone.

Next up for Arsenal is an away game against West Ham United, a side nobody could accuse of lacking motivation at this point in the season. The east London club are desperately fighting for Premier League survival and fell back into the relegation zone last weekend. It is likely to be Arsenal’s toughest remaining test, although their last two visits to the London Stadium have ended in 5-2 and 6-0 away victories.

On the other hand, their final-Sunday trip to Selhurst Park might sound tricky, but Palace are likely to rotate their team heavily in that one, with a Conference League final against Rayo Vallacano of Spain three days after.

City also play Palace in their rescheduled game in hand, from Carabao Cup final weekend in March, which was finally confirmed this week for next Wednesday, May 13 — three days before they play in the FA Cup final. Guardiola’s side then face a daunting trip to sixth-placed Bournemouth three days after that meeting with Chelsea at Wembley. The visit of Brentford this weekend is no easy task either, given their guests are seventh and also harbour European ambitions.

Rounding out City’s season is a home match against Aston Villa.

On paper, Villa are their toughest remaining opponents, but there is a decent chance they will have already achieved their objective of qualifying for the 2026-27 Champions League by then, leaving the game with little riding on it beyond pride for Unai Emery’s side. That match is also being played just four days after the Europa League final, with all the emotion that will entail.

What does the supercomputer say?

The Opta supercomputer, as it has since the middle of October, still believes the advantage lies with Arsenal.

The strength of that belief has fluctuated, dipping sharply after their March defeat by City before rising again in recent weeks. It now stands at 86 per cent, an assessment that reflects both Arsenal’s points advantage and easier remaining fixtures.

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NBA referee Tony Brothers had to be restrained after confronting Timberwolves’ Chris Finch

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18 minutes ago

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May 9, 2026

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Friday’s Game 3 between the San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves was an physical battle, and emotions ran high — including from the designated mediator in chief, Tony Brothers.

With just over five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, the veteran NBA official got into an argument with Timberwolves coach Chris Finch that nearly escalated into an altercation before Brothers was held back by Wolves staffers.

With the Timberwolves trailing by two points, Finch tried to call a timeout and grew incensed when Brothers did not immediately grant it to him. As Finch’s visible frustration grew, Brothers retaliated with equal venom. During the timeout, the two continued a spirited conversation and had to be separated. Brothers, in his 32nd NBA season officiating, could even be seen stepping aggressively toward Finch before being restrained.

“Pretty unprofessional, huh,” Finch said in his postgame news conference while laughing.

“Yeah, I wanted a timeout,” Finch continued. “I had called it three seconds earlier, and I wanted the timeout, and I said I want my three seconds back. Because he clearly heard me. He flipped my way, ignored me, went on with the play, and almost caused us a turnover. And then, he lost it. Then, I asked him where we were taking the ball in, and he was screaming at me for that.”

Brothers has refereed 1,804 regular-season games and 216 playoff games in his 32-year career, including 19 NBA Finals games. He was voted the best referee by players in The Athletic’s 2023 anonymous player poll, receiving 28.8 percent of the votes.

“He always talks s— to us,” one player said then. “He interacts with us instead of taking everything personally. He’d be like, `Sit your ass down, you know you fouled him.’”

Prime analyst Blake Griffin sharply criticized Brothers’ conduct.

“I’ve never seen an official go at a coach like that,” Griffin said on Prime’s “NBA Nightcap.” “And then to go at it again? To be honest, I thought Tony was out of line.”

The Spurs pulled away for a 115-108 victory to take a 2-1 series lead in the Western Conference semifinals. At the point of the incident, Minnesota trailed 102-100. Over the final five minutes, San Antonio closed the game on a 13-8 run.

“It’s competition at the highest level,” Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards said. “We want to win. Finchy want to win. Tony Brothers is Tony Brothers. We all love him, so it’s all good.”

— Jon Krawczysnki contributed to this story

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