Since returning to Real Madrid, Jose Mourinho has been repeatedly asked variations of the same question. What are we to make of this Jose Mourinho. The 63-year-old Jose Mourinho. Is he really all that different from the Jose Mourinho who left Real Madrid more than a decade ago.
“I’ve changed so much,” he claimed in a sit-down with El Chiringuito. All the paranoia. The not knowing who to trust. The corrosiveness. It’s apparently a thing of the past. “I am much more mature, less emotional and more controlled,” Mourinho insisted. When he walks the corridors of Valdebebas, he no longer sees enemies within.
Enough time has elapsed for Mourinho to joke about it these days. He is not taking himself too seriously. The infamous Diego Torres book exposing how toxic his time at the club became. The mole. His fall-out with Iker Casillas. It’s material he now draws on in self deprecation.
Take what happened last week when a member of the Madrid press pack relayed to him that “many of the people who work in the club say you’re much calmer and more relaxed than in your first spell.” A glint of mischief flashed in Mourinho’s eye. “There! You’ve already told me something important,” he smiled. “You talk to people who work here!” The Madrid press pack burst into laughter.
Mourinho’s detractors continue to assert he has lost his edge when it comes to winning things. One thing the Portuguese has never lost, however, is his sense of humour. Mourinho has caught himself manically chuckling at Valdebebas this off-season.
The joke, in a good way, is Kylian Mbappe.
“He’s incredible,” Mourinho said. “He sometimes makes me laugh in training.” It isn’t because he is scrolling through the best Mbappe memes and singing “Kylian dic-ta-tor!” It’s “because,” in Mourinho’s words, “he’s just too good.” It’s perhaps why the Valdebebas mole talks of “a calmer, more relaxed” Mourinho.
When was the last time Mourinho could count on a striker this immensely gifted?
At Benfica last season, Vangelis Pavlidis scored 24 goals. He has, in recent memory, got the better of an England team featuring Mbappe’s team-mate Jude Bellingham, delivering, at Wembley, in a win Greeks won’t forget in a hurry.
All the same, Mbappe “is” in Mourinho’s estimation “operating on a stratospheric level.”
At Fenerbahce, Youssef En-Nesyri put away 20 goals. Edin Dzeko, now in his twilight, backed him up. And yet here’s the thing. Mourinho keeps repeating the same line: “Mbappe is incredible.”
At Roma, Mourinho loaned Romelu Lukaku, his former player at Man United. He loved Paulo Dybala too. Whenever the Argentine played it was “another music”. Mourinho’s last trophy, the Conference League, came in a season in which Tammy Abraham found the net 27 times. “But Mbappe has made history.”
(Maria Jimenez/Real Madrid via Getty Images)
To find someone in the same rarefied air you probably have to go back to Mourinho’s time at Tottenham where he worked with Harry Kane.
But that’s a long time ago now. Five years without a player of this class.
No wonder Mourinho is acting like a blackjack player at the Casino Royal. His luck is in. Having been down and out, the card he now turns over is more than just a 9. It’s an ace and Mourinho can’t hide the way he feels. With Mbappe up his sleeve, Mourinho believes he can win. Make more Netflix documentaries. Be special again. Kylian, after all, is like him. He is not one of the bottle.
However, Madrid, as the fans continue reminding him, finished without a trophy last season. It’s why Mourinho’s here in the first place.
“It’s not up to me to judge or analyse what (Kylian) did last season,” Mourinho said. “A strange season, a complicated season for everyone. In the end, it’s always the same story. (Alvaro) Arbeloa and Xabi (Alonso) took the fall.
“I always say that winning or losing is multifactorial… When you talk to me about Mbappe, I prefer to think about what Kylian can be now. A guy who could have joined up with us on August 14 and showed up on August 12 already tells me something. The reason he wants to show up on the 12th is because he wants to play (the friendly) against Schalke in decent conditions.”
It left an impression on Mourinho. He will hunt with a dog this season, not a cat. And on Wednesday night Mourinho let the dog see the rabbit.
Have pity for Real Sociedad. Pity for Jon Martin. The centre-back is still scanning for Mbappe. He dropped off him. He looked over his left shoulder and saw Federico Valverde bearing down on goal. He checked his right shoulder and saw Mbappe then receiving a pass and running behind him. The 20-year-old academy graduate, already capped for Spain, lost the most dangerous striker in the world. Blind to what Mbappe was to do next, all he heard was the net ripple and the Bernabeu roar.
The visitors and Copa del Rey holders creditably equalised with preoccupying swiftness and, in the second half, all the cheers from the home crowd turned to jeers. At the weekend, Madrid only beat Espanyol in the last minute. Both goals in a 2-1 win came from set-pieces. The €225m spent in the transfer window has not made an instant impact.
Vinicius who, after eight years, considered leaving for Arsenal this summer heard whistles when he touched the ball. His contract renewal, said to be worth €25m a year, is not included in Madrid’s biggest summer spending in years. It should be.
“We know what the Bernabeu is like,” Mourinho said. “The players know what it’s like. I know what it’s like. Obviously for those joining in the summer it’s their first experience of it. But we know what it’s like and thank God the fans are like that. Because it’s a consequence of the club’s history. The high expectations stem from the history. Real Madrid has always had great players, great teams.
“People want more, more, more and more.”
And that’s what Mbappe gave them.
Surrounded by defenders, he received another pass from Valverde with his back to goal, bounced it back to Bellingham, ran in behind, and completed a lightning fast one-two before sweeping the ball underneath Real Sociedad’s goalkeeper Alex Remiro. All in the blink of an eye.
Madrid won 4-1. Vini silenced his critics with a goal and set up Mbappe’s hat-trick goal. As at the World Cup, the stars came out. The galacticos. Mbappe then copied a deep cut celebration by Cristiano Ronaldo, the player whose posters adorned his bedroom wall in Bondy. Not the jump and siiiiiiiu. Another one from Ronaldo’s Madrid days in which he appeared to mimic something taking off. Maybe this team.
(Guillermo Martinez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Afterwards, Mourinho was asked if Mbappe brooks comparison with his childhood idol. Ronaldo scored more than 50 goals a season under Mourinho. Reluctant to make the parallel, he tried to find other words. He is seldom lost for them. And yet Mbappe has made him monotonous.
“This guy’s incredible,” he said. “He’s incredible.”
To say Mbappe has picked up where he left off at the World Cup would be right. The Golden Boot winner. The competition’s all-time top scorer looks, at 27, in a state of grace.
“I’m really glad he made World Cup history,” Mourinho said. “Because there were 25 World Cup-winning players, weren’t there?… I think there were 25 players. But only one will go down in footballing history; And that, I reckon, is the player with the most World Cup goals. He has made history. I can also see he’s absolutely raring to make history with Real Madrid too.”
Mbappe has been tipped to win the Ballon d’Or since his emergence, as a teenager, at Monaco. When Lionel Messi and Ronaldo didn’t win it, Rodri and Luka Modric took it home instead.
When Mbappe left PSG to win the Champions League with Real Madrid, he joined the most successful club in the competition’s history. PSG have since won it back-to-back. In La Liga, Madrid were the best team when he moved to Spain. But Barcelona have been champions in each of his two seasons at the Bernabeu.
(Thomas COEX / AFP via Getty Images)
On Wednesday, Mbappe performed as if determined to change all that this year. Maybe he has changed Mourinho too. Reforming him a bit. If Mourinho is, for now, more chill, even a little zen, it’s because he can count on arguably the best striker in the world entering his prime.
That’s not inside information. It isn’t from a mole. It’s clear from Mourinho demeanour. After watching Madrid’s last Champions League triumph in 2024 at Wembley, where he worked as a pundit for TNT Sport, Mourinho signed for Fenerbahce. He was on the fringe of Europe. The Asian side of the Bosphorus. Apparently finished.
“Nobody abroad wants to watch the Turkish league,” he said. “Who wants to watch this Turkish league. It’s too grey, too dark, smells bad.”
Flash forward two years, and look where he is? Back on what everyone watches. Not just Netflix. He’s on Madrid. Real Madrid. With Mbappe. Kylian Mbappe. Too fast, too good. The olfactics couldn’t be better.
Mourinho can smell victory again.
