In July 2013, a couple of months after Chelsea had beaten Benfica in the Europa League final, José Mourinho, who had by then succeeded Rafa Benítez as Chelsea manager, scoffed at his predecessor.
“I don’t want to win the Europa League,” he said. “It would be a big disappointment for me. I don’t want my players to feel the Europa League is our competition.” Ten years later, Mourinho is in no position to be picky about which European final he is in.
It is 20 years since Mourinho first made his first major impression on European football, as his Porto beat Celtic 3–2 in the final on a night of almost operatic drama in Sevilla. He was 40, dashingly handsome and possessed of a dark charisma that meant his every utterance was pored over to see whether it might be part of some web of Machiavellian intrigue to gain some future psychological advantage. In the decade that followed, he added a further six league titles in four countries (he had already won one in Portugal), as well as winning the Champions League with Porto and Inter, achievements that look all the greater now in an era in which success is the preserve of the megarich.
