In the long arc of José Mourinho’s travels through European football, from Lisbon and Porto to London, Milan, Madrid, Manchester, Rome and Istanbul, he says most of his former clubs remain close to him. Tottenham Hotspur, however, occupies a different place in that memory.
Speaking about his career across the continent, Mourinho said the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 period prevented him from building the personal bond he has felt elsewhere. His time in north London unfolded largely behind closed doors, when empty stands turned one of Europe’s most animated football cities into a strangely distant workplace.
A Tottenham spell without the usual bond
Mourinho said he has maintained a very good relationship with the clubs he has coached, naming Benfica, Porto, Chelsea, Inter, Manchester United, Roma and Fenerbahçe among them. But he described Tottenham as the exception, not because of a sporting dispute, but because the pandemic removed the human contact that normally shapes a manager’s attachment to a club.
“At Tottenham it happened during the Covid period,” he explained. “There was no human connection. The stadium was almost always empty. We played two or three matches with supporters and then without them, without interaction. I did not have that connection with Tottenham.”
The observation offers a reminder of how abruptly football changed in 2020: managers and players worked in silent stadiums, while supporters followed from home and the ordinary rituals of arrival, matchday and post-match exchange disappeared. For a coach whose career has often been marked by intense relationships with club communities, that absence has remained significant.
Madrid rumours arrived before any contact
Mourinho also recalled the unusual beginnings of his move to Real Madrid, saying that public speculation preceded any actual approach. He said transfers and managerial appointments more commonly follow the opposite path, with initial discussions taking place before reports begin to circulate.
In his case, he said, talk of a move to Madrid was already gathering pace when nobody had yet spoken to him. The rumours caught him by surprise, and he initially dismissed them as untrue because he had not been contacted.
“Usually there are conversations first and then the noise begins because of those contacts,” Mourinho said. “In this case it was exactly the other way around. The noise and rumours started before there had been any contact. I was surprised. Nobody had spoken to me, and I thought: ‘It is not true.’ I never believed it was real.”
