Jose Mourinho recalls his Real Madrid happiness after being on quizzed on possible La Liga return

AFP/Getty Images
Ben Hayward13 September 2019

Jose Mourinho refused to be drawn on his future in a La Liga event on Thursday, but the Portuguese fondly recalled his time at Real Madrid on his return to the Spanish capital.

The former Manchester United manager, without a club since his Old Trafford exit last December, was strongly linked with a Real return before Zinedine Zidane returned to the job in March and is still believed to be in the thoughts of club president Florentino Perez.

Mourinho was joined by former Barcelona, Inter Milan and Chelsea striker Samuel Eto'o and La Liga president Javier Tebas in a panel to discuss speed and innovation in football, in association with Livescore.

Asked about his time in Spain, the Portuguese said: "Real Madrid was my best experience because of what I learned as a coach, as a man, from the lessons I took in my career and in my life. It was the best memory of my career. It was fantastic."

In pictures | The defeats that cost Jose Mourinho his Man United job

1/9

Mourinho went on to say that his best moment was winning La Liga in 2011-12, when Los Blancos denied Pep Guardiola's Barcelona a fourth title in a row.

"I came to Spain because I wanted to be the first to win the English league, the Italian league and the Spanish league," he said. "We won the league in Bilbao. Actually we won it at Camp Nou, but mathematically we won it at San Mames."

Pressed on whether he would return, and also encouraged to do so by Tebas, Mourinho added: "You’ll always have me. In six years, I’ve only spoken well of La Liga. I’ll always be proud to have won your league in a moment when it was especially difficult.”

Eto'o, who played for Mourinho at Inter and Chelsea, said the Portuguese should think about a move to Barcelona.

"It would be special," he said. "I would like to ask Jose to come to Mallorca. That would be good. It's the best city in Spain. But I would like him at Barca even more."

The Cameroonian, who retired from football just last Saturday, said the Portuguese was the first to send him a message and described him as "one of the nicest guys" in football.

"I'm sick of saying that this guy is one of the best people in the world of football," he said. "I ended my career and the first person to send me a message was this man."

And he added: "All of us players fight with him, but we'd all kill for him." To that, Mourinho quipped: "Almost all of you!"

Earlier, it was revealed that Eto'o and Mourinho are in a WhatsApp group with other former players. "He sends us scores from all over the world," the Cameroonian joked.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in