On the back of his undoubted success at Porto, José Mourinho was appointed by Chelsea owner Román Abramóvich to take the team to the next level which, in their case at that time, was to win the Premier League.
This is where the Mourinho success story really begins. In his first season with Chelsea he won the Premier League and League Cup spending £81.2 million in the process. The following year he retained the Premier League and won the FA and the League Cups whilst spending a paltry £58.4 million. He then had a barren year but still managed to spend £63 million and this was followed by a further £17.2 million the season he left.
So in his first spell as manager of Chelsea he had managed to spend £219.8 million. And they say money can’t buy success!
This ability to spend money was noticed by Inter Milan who also thought he may be able to add some trophies to their cabinet.
In his first season with Inter he won the Supercoppa Italiana and the Serie A title, spending a mere £42.4 million in the process. His second season brought an unprecedented treble of the title, the Coppa Italia and the Champion’s League. This only cost the club £59 million so, by the time he left for Real Madrid, Mourinho had spent £101.4 million which, for Inter, was money well spent.
At Real Madrid, Mourinho continued the winning habit. His first season saw him win the Copa Del Rey and the second brought the La Liga title. He had spent £62.3 million and £48.5 million respectively and was to spend another £36.2 million before leaving to return to Chelsea. In total, his spending in Spain amounted to £147 million.
Now into his second spell at Chelsea and another league title was added to his collection, this time in his second season. The first one back had cost Abramóvich £80 million whereas the following, title-winning season was to cost £116 million. Before he was sacked in 2015 Mourinho managed to spend another £63.6 million taking his total spend this time to £259.6 million.
Onwards and upwards and his next port of call, Manchester. Here he was not just expected to win trophies but was expected to do so in a certain style. Surely this would prove that he really was a great manager and not just that he could spend money.
Bear in mind that, in the past at Chelsea, Abramovich had grown tired of the boring way Chelsea had ground their way to the title on occasions and also wanted to see some exciting attacking football which didn’t materialise very often.
It’s all very well pointing out that his Real Madrid team had outscored Barcelona but, in Spain, it is not quite as difficult to rack up the 4-0, 5-0 and 6-0 scorelines as it is in the Premier League.
Mourinho set about his task the only way he knows how. He found out in which drawer the chequebook was kept and proceeded to spend money. He spent £156 million in his first season and continued to collect trophies, winning the Community Shield, the EFL Cup and the Europa League.
As we write, he has spent a further £146 million on new players and sits well placed in both the Premier League and the Champion’s League in addition to having reached the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup.
José Mourinho is now the first ever manager to spend more than £1 billion in his career to date. He has done so in 17 years of management which have brought him unprecedented success.
Is he a good enough manager to have had success without spending all that money? We will probably never know because he is not in a position where he needs to take a job to prove himself to anybody.
Many times it has been said that, even spending vast sums of money is no guarantee of success, and that a good manager is still required to buy the right players. There is, no doubt, some truth in that statement, but it must be a heck of a lot easier when the manager in question has a few hundred million at his disposal!
Examples include Mourinho himself at most of his clubs, Kenny Dalglish at Blackburn Rovers, Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich and now City, Unai Emery at PSG and the list goes on.
There is also a very short list of managers who have won the Premier League without having the budget of a small country. This list includes all the managers who have won the Premier League just by being a great manager, if only for one season. This list is made up of ONE manager, Claudio Ranieri.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 