Last exit home – José Mourinho returns to Benfica Lisbon, the club where it all began

On Thursday afternoon, a Ferrari turned into Benfica's training ground across the river from Lisbon, and the eagerly awaited events began. At the wheel was José Mourinho, the car once gifted to him by Chelsea oligarch Roman Abramovich—according to the media, who missed no detail. Soon, they were able to announce the deal: Portugal's long-lost coach's son was coming home. José Mourinho is taking over Benfica with a contract until the end of the 2027 season.

Star coach Mourinho, aka The Special One, is working in his home country for the first time since his groundbreaking Champions League title with FC Porto in 2004. At the age of 62, he is even returning to the club where he made his debut as head coach. In 2000, after promising beginnings as an assistant at FC Barcelona, ​​he was hired by Benfica to succeed the sacked Jupp Heynckes – again shortly after the start of the season in September. Despite encouraging results and the first glimpses of his dazzling personality, Mourinho resigned in December of that year. He had boldly demanded a contract extension, but Benfica refused to be pressured.

Portugal's most popular club may not have won a European Cup since 1962, but it still sees itself as a proud top club. You can't lose a Champions League home game against Azerbaijanis. That's exactly what happened to coach Bruno Lage on Tuesday, in a 3-2 defeat to Qarabag. He was fired that same night.

With Mourinho's appointment, the voltaics have now outdone themselves. Just last month, Benfica sacked their new coach from his position at Fenerbahce Istanbul. After the Lisbon club's narrow victory in the final round of Champions League qualifying (0-0, 1-0), Mourinho was dismissed. A few days later, the only goalscorer of the round, Kerem Aktürkoglu, moved from Benfica to Fenerbahce, and now the coach is going the other way. "A strange coincidence," says Fenerbahce president Ali Koc, and he means it quite maliciously.

Probably also to counter speculation that the appointment had been planned long in advance, Mourinho explained on Wednesday that Benfica hadn't actually been on his agenda. He said that returning to the Portuguese national team one day was always in his mind as a "natural career progression." Now things will be different: "What coach says no to Benfica? Not me." At his introduction, he spoke of great emotion: "To the millions of Benfica fans around the world, I would like to say that no club I've coached has made me feel more honor and responsibility than Benfica."

Mourinho is expected to lead Benfica back to the top of the national team after two missed championships. Can he even break the famous "Guttmann curse"? Upon his departure, coach Bela Guttmann swore after winning the 1962 European Cup final that Benfica would not win another European Cup for the next 100 years. Since then, they have lost eight finals; with each one, belief in the dark magic has grown.

To banish the ghosts, Mourinho now has Beelzebub. Whether in England, Italy, Spain, or most recently Turkey: no coach causes discord as reliably as the gifted polemicist from the port city of Setúbal. In the past, his quips against colleagues and referees were accompanied by extraordinary successes. But a new generation of players increasingly refused to follow his brutal friend-or-foe schemes. And tactically and methodically, he's long been considered outdated anyway. Whether at Tottenham, AS Roma, or Fenerbahçe: recently, he's been unable to succeed even at clubs that would once have been far too small for him.

Since 2015 with Chelsea, the "winner" (Benfica President Rui Costa) hasn't won a national championship and hasn't coached in the Champions League since 2020. This is one of the reasons why Mourinho, of course, didn't say no to Benfica.