EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsJust after 10 p.m. Spanish time on Wednesday night, Florentino Prez's campaign team made it official. "MOUcha historia por hacer," they posted on social media, meaning "MOUch history left to make."The (rather terrible) pun, based on Prez's re-election slogan, was accompanied by a brief video, featuring an image of a smiling Jos Mourinho, in a Real Madrid shirt, saying just one word: "Yes."If Prez is elected as president in Sunday's vote by club members, Mourinho will be his new coach.At the same time, Prez's rival, businessman Enrique Riquelme, was appearing live on Spanish TV, telling late-night talk show "El Hormiguero" that he would sign Erling Haaland if elected. Host Pablo Motos informed Riquelme, mid-interview, that Prez had just confirmed Mourinho's return. The candidate was left momentarily stumped. "He's announced him now?" Riquelme eventually replied, before recovering his composure. "Well, he's had him there once already. I think he's a good coach."Prez's announcement of Mourinho to coach the team in 2026-27 and beyond was no out-of-the-blue bombshell. ESPN reported last month that Mourinho, who previously coached Madrid between 2010 and 2013, had agreed to come back to the Bernabu. But the ongoing election process was a complicating factor. There had been major doubts as to whether Prez would name Mourinho ahead of Sunday's poll, or wait until afterwards. Now, those doubts had been dispelled.Madrid have gone two seasons without landing a major trophy, with three coaches -- Carlo Ancelotti, Xabi Alonso and lvaro Arbeloa -- unable to get the best out of the team. Prez's solution is Mourinho."[Kylian] Mbapp, Vincius [Junior], [Jude] Bellingham, [Arda] Gler, [Federico] Valverde, [Aurelien] Tchouameni... They're the best in the world," Prez told Spain's national broadcaster TVE last week. "A good coach, with these players, is going to make another very important era in Real Madrid history." Prez believes Mourinho is that coach.Why Perez rates Mourinho so highlyMourinho's track record, as one of the biggest names in football management for over 20 years, needs little explanation. His first spell in Madrid -- which began in May 2010 -- came at arguably his professional peak, having just conquered Europe with Internazionale.Domestically, his task was to go toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola's Barcelona. Mourinho's predecessor, Manuel Pellegrini, had earned 96 points in LaLiga in 2009-10 but still finished three points behind Bara. In Europe, Madrid had fallen further. These were not the serial UCL winners of the last decade. When Mourinho arrived, Madrid had been eliminated in the Champions League round of 16 for six years in a row.Mourinho changed all that. Under his management, Madrid reached three consecutive Champions League semifinals, falling to Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, although they were unable to take the next step. In LaLiga, they won the league back in 2011-12, for the first time in four years. That season is known as the "league of records." Madrid posted a record 100 points and scored a record 121 goals, with a record goal difference of +89.Lionel Messi scored a historic 50 league goals, and that still wasn't enough to stop Mourinho's Madrid.Things went wrong in 2012-13. Madrid finished 15 points behind Barcelona, and Mourinho called it "the worst season of my career." He clashed with the media and rowed with senior players like Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos. In May 2013, Prez said Mourinho was leaving "by mutual agreement," replaced by Ancelotti, a man with a radically different managerial approach.Mourinho's time in Madrid was far from perfect, but Prez remembers it fondly. "We got competitive again," Prez said in an interview last month. "Then we won six Champions Leagues in 12 years." Those Champions Leagues came under Ancelotti -- in 2014, 2022 and 2024 -- and Zinedine Zidane's three-peat in 2016, 2017 and 2018. But for Prez, it was Mourinho's mentality and methods that laid the foundations.Prez has often been dismissive of coaches and their importance. His back-to-basics football philosophy, from the 2000s Galctico era to the present day, is based around signing the biggest stars. "You know me," he said in an interview with Diario AS on Thursday. "As long as I'm president, the best players in the world will play here."It's hard to imagine him saying the same thing about coaches. "I've had three coaches in a year before," Prez said as he sought to downplay last season's twin failure with Alonso and Arbeloa -- referring to 2004-05, when Jos Antonio Camacho, Mariano Garca Ramn and Vanderlei Luxemburgo all coached the team.He has, however, always rated Mourinho. "[Prez] always says that he's only had one coach at Real Madrid," Prez confidant and media personality Eduardo Inda said in 2015. "He says it with irony, but he says he's only had one coach -- Don Jos Mourinho -- in the 12 years he's been president."Not Vicente del Bosque. Not Fabio Capello, Pellegrini, or Ancelotti. Mourinho.Is Mourinho's return really a surprise?As Madrid's 2025-26 season stumbled towards its trophyless conclusion, the club was left scrambling for a new coach. The World Cup makes for a compressed summer timeline, and the two men who had long been viewed as next in line -- former players Alonso and Arbeloa, who both began their coaching careers at the club's academy before getting the top job -- had been hired and fired in under a year.Alonso's reign was cut short in January, a promising start undermined by Prez's lack of faith in him, and the club's failure to back the coach in clashes with key players like Vincius Jnior. Alvaro Arbeloa was then thrown in as coach, prematurely, at the deep end, and proved unable to control a divided dressing room, a fact made public by the dressing-room confrontation between Valverde and Tchouameni.Having ruthlessly dispensed with Alonso and Arbeloa, who was next? This time, Prez's habitual emergency calls weren't available. Ancelotti, whose return in 2021 after leaving Everton seemed as left-field at the time as Mourinho's does now, is taking Brazil to the World Cup. Zidane, who answered the call to steady the ship in 2019, having walked away nine months earlier, is waiting for his opportunity with France.Mourinho's appointment fits the late-era Prez trend of those nostalgic -- critics might say unimaginative -- re-hires. It's also consistent with Prez's diagnosis of Madrid's problems. Publicly, he has blamed last summer's Club World Cup and the resulting calendar. "We didn't have a preseason," he said. "That's why we had 28 injuries."Privately, there has been concern over the wave of dressing room problems and a desire to fix them. There is also a belief that there are some parallels between the panorama when Mourinho last arrived, back in 2010 -- with Madrid on the back foot to a dominant Barcelona -- and today.Sources told ESPN that Mourinho wasn't necessarily first choice when the club were drawing up a list of candidates. Some senior figures at the club denied that he was a contender; others ruled him out of the running entirely. Mourinho wasn't the same as in 2010, they said, and neither was the club. However, he was Prez's favourite. Work was needed to repair the damaged relationship with Mourinho's agent, Jorge Mendes, who had long been blacklisted at Madrid. Director general Jos ngel Snchez helped build bridges with Mendes, ESPN sources said.Is Mourinho still an elite coach?His Benfica were undefeated in Liga Portugal last season, but they drew 11 of 34 games, finishing third behind Porto and Sporting CP. His team did impress against Madrid in the Champions League, beating them in the league phase, before being narrowly eliminated in the knockout playoff. In Mourinho's season at Fenerbahe, he finished second, failing to beat rivals Galatasaray and Besiktas in any of their meetings. Before that, at Roma, Mourinho registered two sixth-placed Serie A finishes, and won the 2022 Conference League.It's the only trophy he has won in the last five seasons.Mourinho remains hugely popular among some Madrid fans. Others remember his time at the club with less fondness. "A lot of people like Mourinho," veteran journalist Santi Segurola said on Onda Cero radio this week. "But a lot of people think Mourinho is an exercise in nostalgia, from a man [Prez] who ought to propose something new, something different. He's proposing a coach from 16 years ago."A social media post from Prez's campaign on Thursday, setting out the reasons behind Mourinho's proposed return, was another exercise in nostalgia. "Por qu?" it began, repeating Mourinho's infamous Bernabu news conference outburst in 2011, when Madrid were beaten by Barcelona in the Champions League. "Why?""Because he's a winner. Because of his competitiveness. Because of his leadership. Because he defended Real Madrid," the campaign video continued, alongside vintage clips of Mourinho on the touchline.Some ESPN sources at Madrid's Valdebebas training ground say they are worried about the changes that might accompany Mourinho's return, believing it could ignite an already combustible situation behind the scenes. Others share a different perspective: that this is a different Mourinho, an older Mourinho, one who perhaps has more in common with Ancelotti than his own, previous firebrand incarnation.Nostalgia might be an election vote-winner. But is it a recipe for success on the pitch?
