Napoleon Bonaparte once described Istanbul as the capital of the world if the Earth was a single state. Now it is home to the man who has always wanted to be the centre of attention.
Jose Mourinho, manager of Fenerbahce, who welcomes none other than his old club Manchester United to Turkey in the Europa League this week when he will be front and centre again. Just how he likes it.
The former Chelsea, Spurs and United boss is living in the Four Seasons Hotel on the banks of the Bosphorus, a place fittingly opulent where the cheapest suites start at £1,000 per night, pocket money for someone getting £10m a season for taking the Fenerbahce job on a two-year deal. From his suite in this 19th-century palace on the European side of Istanbul, the views extend across the Bosphorus Strait, to the Asian side where Fenerbahce are based. On the evening Mail Sport encounters Mourinho in the hotel courtyard, he is dressed top to bottom in an Adidas tracksuit – a commercial relationship stretching almost two decades.
It is just days after the wedding of his daugher Matilde in a lavish ceremony at the Mourinho family farm in Portugal and he is hosting dinner with his colleagues in the Yali Lounge.
‘Welcome to my house,’ Mourinho jokes to his guests, before showing them around the facilities, including the pool where he swims regularly on mornings before his chauffeur takes him to Fenerbahce’s Can Bartu training complex.
Jose Mourinho is preparing to take on Manchester United with Fenerbahce this Thursday
Mourinho took over the Turkish giants in the summer and is hoping to add to his list of trophies
Mail Sport headed to the £1,000-a-night Four Seasons in Istanbul where Mourinho is living
At 61, he is still energetic, oozing with charisma and as one source puts it, ‘in love with Istanbul because it is like London but with better weather.’
Fenerbahce were prepared to rent the best house in town but Mourinho opted for the hotel life, citing his desire to get things done. The only thing he can cook is scrambled eggs. Occasionally, he ventures a few hundred metres out of the hotel into the packed streets of Besiktas to a favoured doner kebab joint, where the staff show Mail Sport images of Mourinho tucking in alone and reveal that he has asked them not to share.
Hotel staff joke how he orders the same thing for dinner – chicken soup followed by margherita pizza, ice cream and sparkling water.
These are simple pleasures but this is a palace fit for a king and a world away from The Lowry Hotel in Manchester, where he lived for the entirety of his 935-day reign at Old Trafford. The 81 points he won in 2017-18 when they finished second to City remains United’s highest since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down in 2013. On Thursday, Erik ten Hag visits Fenerbahce with the Dutchman clinging on to his job.
As the same source puts it: ‘Jose is desperate to win. He is a serial winner. That is why Fenerbahce hired him and it will kickstart his reign here.’
From Mourinho’s suite in this 19th-century palace on the European side of Istanbul, the views extend across the Bosphorus Strait, to the Asian side where Fenerbahce are based
He received a hero’s welcome at Fenerbahce, with over 30,000 fans coming to his unveiling
So why Turkey? The reasons for Fenerbahce are clear – Mourinho craves that dopamine hit and the raw passion that Turkish football brings. Over 30,000 fans turned up for his unveiling, where he spoke no fewer than 134 words and got them going with a simple line. ‘This shirt is my skin,’ he declared.
For a man obsessed with cultivating that ‘us against everyone else’ mentality, it is a match made in heaven. With Fenerbahce, he has a ‘real football battle’ when it comes to their arch-rivals Galatasaray. A close Turkish friend from his time in London warned him before taking the Fenerbahce job about a long-standing bias against the club from the authorities.
Last season, they fielded their U19s and walked off after one minute against Galatasaray in the Super Cup to signal their displeasure at the Turkish Football Federation. The move came days after Fenerbahce had called members to vote on leaving the Super Lig in an unprecedented move. In April, Fenerbahce issued a statement stating their fight against ‘an unjust football system in Turkey’.
It is precisely the kind of situation where Mourinho thrives. ‘We were destined to be together,’ says one club source, who insists that he will smash the conspiracies wide open.
Fenerbahce last won the Super Lig in 2014. Last season, a record 99 points wasn’t enough as Galatasaray became the first team in Turkish history to hit the century mark.
Amid the backdrop of the club’s presidential election, Ali Koc, the billionaire incumbent, sacked Ismail Kartal, who lost just one game all season, and pulled off their biggest signing. In came Mourinho and a week later, Koc was re-elected.
For Mourinho, who hasn’t won a league title since 2015, it is an opportunity to win again. When Roma sacked him in January, it hurt. He won the hearts of the Giallorossi with two European finals but cried when he left. The images of the 100,000 Roma fans who gathered outside the Colosseum to celebrate their Europa Conference League showed what it meant.
Mourinho rejected advances from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in Europe because he still has the hunger to win ‘meaningful’ silverware.
Already, rival fans are enjoying Mourinho’s presence. Last month, he was given a yellow card for placing a laptop in front of a TV camera to protest a refereeing decision.
Fenerbahce president Ali Koc (left) went all out to appoint a serial winner in Mourinho
Mourinho’s ‘us against everyone else’ mentality fits in perfectly with the psyche at the club
‘He is good for football in our country because he brings many more eyes to our league,’ says a hotel staff member, who supports Galatasaray and regularly sees Mourinho.
Club sources speak of a football obsessive who does 12-hour days and prepares meticulously for each game, watching the opposition in depth. ‘Class, the best I have seen,’ says one of the Fenerbahce coaches. ‘Unique but dangerous,’ says another.
His Italian assistant Salvatore Foti refers to him as ‘Mister’ in an ironic throwback to when a young Mourinho would refer to his mentor Sir Bobby Robson as ‘Mister’ at Barcelona.
At the training ground, they speak about his natural aura and how perceptive he is. ‘He notices every little thing and wants to know absolutely everything,’ says one source.
Ahead of Fenerbahce’s recent Europa League clash against FC Twente, Mail Sport asks Mourinho whether he had the same ambition that he had 20 years ago when he won the Champions League with Porto.
’20 years since I won the Champions League but two years since I won the Conference League with Roma and one year since I “lost” the Europa League final,’ he says. ‘I’ve shown my ambition in the past couple of years and Fenerbahce is the opposite of no ambition. Fenerbahce has ambition and the conditions to achieve the targets are very difficult. The Turkish people know what I mean (a dig at the authorities). I have the same fire, the same ambition. I still do the same emotional things that get me yellow cards so apart from my looks, nothing has changed.’
When we cross paths later, I enquire why he felt the need to remind. ‘Because you know how easily people forget,’ he says.
You only have to read the BBC Sport report from the night his Porto beat Celtic in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final to get a feel of how far the ‘translator’ has come. His name wasn’t mentioned once. But he is pure box office now, with five million followers on Instagram alone and an in-depth Netflix documentary scheduled for next year. Among the dozens of interview requests he has declined in recent weeks was one from Piers Morgan.
At 61, the iconic coach is still energetic, oozing with charisma and in love with Istanbul
Hotel staff joke at the Four Seasons how Mourinho orders the same thing for dinner every night – chicken soup followed by margherita pizza, ice cream and sparkling water.
These are simple pleasures but this is a palace fit for a king and a world away from The Lowry Hotel in Manchester, where he lived for the entirety of his 935-day reign at Old Trafford
There is little doubt about the manager’s effect on the players. For most, who grew up admiring Mourinho, there is a ‘dreamlike’ feeling of working under a footballing icon.
‘The Special One’ has won 26 trophies but this is where he is now. Celebrating the trophies he used to mock – he once said he didn’t want to win the Europa League with Chelsea, just months after Rafael Benitez had won it.
One source reveals how exiting the Champions League at the qualifying stage with Fenerbahce wasn’t seen as catastrophic by Mourinho because he sees Europe’s second-tier competition as a trophy opportunity.
As Mourinho never hesitates to mention, he has won everywhere but Tottenham where Covid interrupted and he was sacked days before the League Cup final.
There is a unique tattoo on his upper right arm which shows his three European trophies. ‘I am the only one who can have it,’ he declares. Image is everything. ‘History cannot be deleted,’ he says and in fairness, it is quite a record.
That winning obsession remains. After a 3-1 home defeat to Galatasaray in September, one source close to the Fenerbahce camp describes how he was ‘walking around like a ghost’ because the performance was a ‘disaster.’
Galatasaray edited a graphic of ‘The Crying One’ on their social media channels – a move that infuriated Mourinho.
But there are some doubts over his style already, with Fenerbahce supporters voicing their concerns with the football, compared to the free-flowing side that scored 99 goals in 38 league games last season. That honeymoon period feels like it might already be coming to an end. They’ve dropped seven points in eight games this season – Fenerbahçe dropped 15 in the whole of last season – including a draw at the weekend that leaves them eight points behind leaders Galatasaray. ‘This is not a patient club or a patient country,’ says one Fenerbahce member, who predicts that both Mourinho and Koc will leave if they don’t win the league.
It hasn’t been easy for Mourinho though, with Fenerbahce chasing their first title since 2014
But he will hope to pile the pressure on Erik ten Hag when he takes on his former club this week
Mourinho needs former United players, Fred and Sofyan Amrabat, who he sees as two of the most important players in the side, to step up if the manager is to show he can still be a force on the field as well as off it.
Thursday would be a good time to start. And there is precedent. When Fenerbahce last played an English club, they beat a United side managed by Mourinho in 2016. Victory again would be a catalyst and if he can harness that siege mentality to win the league with Fenerbahce, he will rank it as one of his great achievements.
A shot at international management is the expected next step. It is the one blank on his CV. So perhaps it is fitting that on the edge of Europe where East meets West, the man who has completed club football will bow out.
Whether or not it is with silverware remains to be seen but only a fool would bet against it. There is life in the old dog yet. But he needs to find that bark sharpish.
