Here in Madrid, Mourinho says he has matured – let's see

 They say “never go back”, but why would someone as unconventional as José Mourinho follow conventional wisdom? On Wednesday night he takes charge of a first home league match since returning to Real Madrid, the third club he has managed twice.

His second dalliance with Chelsea brought a league title but a catastrophic third season and his first managerial role was a brief spell at Benfica, where he returned for a similarly brief visit last season. Mourinho’s first tilt at Real ended in rancour, but now, with the club not winning a major trophy since 2024, a second try was irresistible. So forget “never go back”, keep going back. Never stop going back.

Clearly his managerial career, like most, has been one of diminishing returns. Can this return to Real be his Tiger Woods at the 2019 Masters moment, a final triumph which defies the changing times and taps into some innate knowledge of how to win? Or will it be more like most of Tiger Woods’ other golf tournaments since 2009?

Everything at Real Madrid’s training complex is pristine, which requires dedicated maintenance, given how much of it is white. Two gardeners in Real tracksuits prune greenery on a roundabout at one entrance, dozens of kids and a surprising number of grown-ups wait at another, in an unshaded spot which players drive past twice on their way in and out of training.

There is something not just gentlemanly but almost saintly to the club’s image, which Mourinho did not fit in 2010 and does not now. This is the manager who pokes some coaches in the eye and accuses others of voyeurism. Last year he was criticised for his response to alleged racist abuse of Vinícius Júnior, arguing he had incited the Benfica crowd. At Fenerbahce he twisted the nose of Galatasaray coach Okan Buruk having lost a Turkish Cup match. After defeat to Sevilla in the Europa League final with Roma he confronted referee Anthony Taylor in a car park to call him “a f---ing disgrace”.

Yet Mourinho, he insists, has changed. “I feel calmer and I control my emotions better,” he said on Tuesday. “Difficult situations will come, but I have not seen anyone being lazy, and I like that they are working for Real Madrid.” There have been no signs of a blow-up yet, other than yelling at Denzel Dumfries in Real’s season-opening win at Espanyol for failing to take a throw-in quickly enough.

“He says he feels like he’s matured, I feel like that is yet to be tested,” says Alex Kirkland, ESPN’s Madrid correspondent. “Let’s see when the Clásico comes around, when the derby comes around, when they’re under pressure and have lost a game or two.”

There is an upside to his tempestuous qualities. “For those of us who work in La Liga and want people talking about it, Mourinho’s return is the best possible thing,” says Kirkland. “You want star players and the people that give you the biggest headlines. There’s no doubt Mourinho is that. For us in the media it’s a dream.”

There was little of Mourinho’s old sparkle to begin with at Tuesday’s press conference, but by the end he was joking with a radio journalist about his supposed contacts within the club, and mock-threatening him if his briefings turned hostile. It is all fun and games with Mourinho, until it is not. When back at Chelsea in 2013 he called himself “the happy one”, but in that spell he almost came to blows with Arsène Wenger on the touchline and lost his temper so forcefully with Eva Carneiro it ended in a court hearing.

Some of his challenges at Real are unchanged from when he arrived in 2010 and faced arguably the best team in history in Barcelona. Mourinho broke their four-year streak of La Liga titles with a record-breaking title of 100 points and a +89 goal difference. Barcelona’s current Hansi Flick incarnation may appear less daunting, but they have still won the last two titles and six of the last seven Clásicos by an aggregate score of 22-11.

Then there is the usual Galactico issue of moulding several of the world’s best players into a coherent team. The “can Mbappé, Viní and Bellingham play together?” debate is like a Spanish Taste the Difference version of England’s old Lampard-Gerrard woe. Guillem Balagué, a Spanish football expert, foresees a challenge. “Everyone is very aware, including the players, of the deficiencies of the team. It is not just needing a holding midfielder, it’s a collective mindset. There’s no team there, so that is a big job, especially with a Barcelona that seems to be flying.

“If you’ve got one or two players that don’t defend in today’s football you’re dead. In the big games you have Viní and Mbappé making the first and second run of pressure then that’s it, and better sides can open them up. Espanyol dominated Real Madrid for around 40 minutes. I’m an Espanyol fan and we don’t have the right to do that, we don’t have the players to do that and yet we could pass the ball around quite easily.”

For now the mood in the Spanish capital is optimistic, bordering on bullish. Mourinho is back in a city which loves him and befits his status, as he sees it. It must beat working in England, at least, with the press addressing him as “mister” by the press and reverence for serial winners. The fans are on his side. “He is more mature,” says Eugenio Muriel from the White Hearts Real fan group. “He understands the club much better. I like what I have seen so far, in our fan club’s WhatsApp group people are so excited.

“In the end of his first spell, he had some issues with people but that’s life. I also have issues at work, with some people I have a better relationship than with others. The problem is that everything that happens at Real Madrid is known everywhere.”

Mario Valverde, another fan, is not related to Real midfielder Federico Valverde but occasionally claims him as a long-lost nephew. “Mourinho is one of the few managers who can manage the egos, because he’s got such a big ego himself. He’s re-evaluated himself and his man-management skills and it will be different this time.”

It still feels odd that a man whose last four jobs have been Tottenham, Roma, Fenerbahce and Benfica, with one Conference League title to show for it, is the new manager of Real Madrid in 2026. Why is he back? “Florentino Pérez knows they need to win a trophy this season,” says Madrid-based Sam Leveridge, a Madrid-based journalist,. “That’s why Mourinho’s come in, because it’s not a project, it’s not long-term. It helped Perez a lot in the elections because he said he was going to bring back Mourinho, a proven winner.”

The fear is that proof, the old near-guarantee of trophies, is receding ever-further into the past. There is plenty of evidence for Mourinho being beyond his peak and combusting with increasing speed at each new club he joins. Perhaps all of these are just more truisms for him to defy.