As the new La Liga season prepared to get underway, BBC Radio 5 live's DJ Spoony sat down with former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho to discuss his career, life at Real Madrid and future plans.
Here are the highlights of that interview:
SPOONY: I'm used to calling the top man at a football club 'the manager', but you're head coach at Real Madrid. Do you like being a manager or do you prefer to be called coach?
MOURINHO: In my relationship with my players I had everything. I had the traditional Portuguese 'Mr', I had 'the guv', I had 'the boss', 'coach' and 'Jose'.
SPOONY: Which is your favourite?
MOURINHO: You know, 'the guv' was the one I took. I think it was Damien Duff, the first one to call me that, and I took a few weeks to understand the dimension. What matters for me is that it remains forever. Even today Frank Lampard and John Terry call me 'boss' and I'm not the boss anymore.
SPOONY: When we see you on the touchline or in a press conference, it would very much appear that those things don't matter to you. But sitting here speaking to you now, you hold these things very dear and close to you.
MOURINHO: These are the things that matter for me. I read a book from one of the most important coaches in the history of university sports, John Wooden, a basketball coach at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), and one of the things he says is that the most important thing in all of this is 'the man'. The human relation. The best coach is the one who puts in everything.
SPOONY: Is winning everything?
MOURINHO: No, winning is not everything. But winning is more important than any one of us. Sometimes you have the feeling during the match that a player cannot improve, and you can read the situation - he didn't start well, but he has the conditions to finish well - but sometimes you feel immediately the team started bad, the players are bad, and you have to make some changes.
If the result goes completely against you, you have to take some decisions and some risks and everyone's afraid of that.
SPOONY: You hold Sir Alex Ferguson in very high regard?
MOURINHO: Of course. My first contact with him was not one to forget because Porto beat Manchester United in the Champions League. After the match he was knocking on our dressing room door with Gary Neville, and they wanted to congratulate our dressing room.
So that was a moment when I understood that when the win is deserved, you have to respect the winners and you have to know to enjoy a little bit the happiness of the others.
It happened with Bayern Munich last season when we (Real Madrid) lost the semi-final on penalties, and at the end of the match it was not a drama for me.
I was also in their dressing room. I remember that day of Porto-Man United, and it was the start of my relationship with the greatest manager of British football.
SPOONY: Would you go back to Chelsea?
MOURINHO: I will go where people really want me. But I have to repeat always this: I'm with Real Madrid, I very much want to be, I have a new contract, I'm not thinking about leaving.
The day I leave is when I want to go. But yes, I want to go back one day, that's for sure.
SPOONY: People always say Barcelona are the greatest club side that we've ever seen in this generation, yet Real Madrid won La Liga. You must be proud?
MOURINHO: We won, and we won with nine points difference. They didn't win, and they didn't win because they had a bad season, because sometimes big teams have a bad season where they lose points.
They had 91 points, and with 91 points you are the champion of every Liga. The point is, Real Madrid had 100 points. We beat every record in the league in Spain and so we won because we were tremendous, because we've had an incredible season.
SPOONY: What drives you? What keeps you so motivated?
MOURINHO: The club above everything. When I go to a club, I wear the shirt, I feel the shirt like my first one or my last one, I feel the fans as part of myself, I create internal links with fans.
I become immediately one of them, and I feel that I am one of them with a privileged position to fight for the club and to try to bring to all of them happiness.
SPOONY: Is this what happens when there's a potential problem between yourself and an owner, in that they don't always see it from the fans' point of view?
MOURINHO: You go through my career since day one until now and I've never had problems with clubs and owners.
At Chelsea, I didn't want to stay and let things go into a direction where we were all feeling it was not the best direction.
We felt that was the best decision, because in this moment we are friends. There are no problems between me and Roman (Abramovich, Chelsea owner).
When people know me they understand that if sometimes I'm not an easy person to work with it's because I fight for my people, for the best conditions for the players and I fight for the club and I fight for the fans, and I become a fan.
SPOONY: Sir Bobby Robson is a national treasure in the UK and you were his right-hand man. How much did you learn from him?
MOURINHO: I was lucky. I was lucky because he took me in when I was really young. I spent something like five years with Sir Bobby, and of course he was very important for me.
But again, if you ask me to say the most important things with Sir Bobby and why did I learn a lot, I keep the person. I forget everything about football and I keep the person.
SPOONY: You've signed a new contract until 2016 at Real Madrid, but the accusation in the past is that you're just about winning trophies, and not bothered about young players coming through. So what is your master plan for Real Madrid?
MOURINHO: You know, first of all the challenge was to come here and to win, and to stop that domination of Barcelona in the Spanish league. We did it, and I could say 'job done', but we want not to win in an isolated way - we want to keep winning.
Real Madrid was the biggest club of the last century because of results, and we want Real Madrid to go in the same direction in the 21st century.
SPOONY: And just before I let you go, do you see yourself one day managing an international side? Would you manage an international side that wasn't Portugal?
MOURINHO: In this moment I don't see it because it's a completely different kind of job. In the club we play 60 matches a season, in an international team we play maybe 10, so it's a job I don't want to have in this moment.
But it's a job that makes people full of pride, especially if you do it with your own country, and I will do it with Portugal because I think Portuguese people wouldn't understand if I do it with another country. I don't imagine myself in the World Cup playing against Portugal.
SPOONY: Managing England against Portugal in the semi-finals…
MOURINHO: It would be dramatic…
Originally Posted by Ach
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