José Mourinho is on the verge of making a return to Real Madrid with the details of his appointment set to be finalised after the end of the Spanish league season.
The current Benfica manager is the first choice of the club and their president Florentino Pérez, who went on the attack against his critics on Tuesday evening and demanded a fresh mandate from the club’s members. Mourinho, 63, has one more game in charge of Benfica this season – still unbeaten in the Portuguese top flight but currently placed to finish third.
Mourinho will probably deal directly with Pérez over the terms of his appointment. There will have to be an agreement reached with Benfica who have Mourinho – who started his management career at the club in 2000 – under contract until the summer of 2027. No problems are expected on that front.
Real have three more league games this season, the first of which is on Thursday at home to Real Oviedo, where fans are expected to express their dissatisfaction with the season. After an away trip to relegation-threatened Sevilla on Sunday, Real’s last game is at home to Athletic Club in 10 days’ time.
The return of Mourinho 13 years after the last of his three seasons at the club is a significant moment in the history of Real, with some of the club legends from his previous era railing against the decision. Chief among them is goalkeeper Iker Casillas, who has posted on X that he believes his former team-mate Xabi Alonso, sacked in January, should still be in charge.
Mourinho, pictured in 2013, originally took over at Real Madrid in 2010 – Adam Davy/PA
Pérez, 79, who has been president for 23 of the past 26 years, said on Tuesday night that he was fit and healthy and ready to continue – despite the rumours swirling around his succession. After two years without a major trophy, the support for Pérez among fans and the Spanish media has started to ebb – a change in the weather given his grip on power and the seven Champions League titles on his watch.
In his press conference on Tuesday, Pérez played down the severity of the fight between Federico Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni, which resulted in the former having to go to hospital. He railed against a critical article in the Spanish newspaper ABC, written, in his words, “by a woman who I don’t even know if she knows anything about football”. He said that friends had called having heard rumours that he was suffering from cancer – but that was not the case and he was busy running the club as well as his construction conglomerate ACS.
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