Jose Mourinho will be back on one of his old patches when his Real Madrid side visit Roma on Wednesday in the Champions League – and he’ll be bound for a big reception.
Mourinho has always been a love-him-or-hate-him manager, dividing opinion wherever he goes. But the bonds he has preserved with some fanbases are stronger than others.
Ahead of his Roman return, we’ve ranked how much his former clubs still love him – from most to least.
Note: We haven’t counted current club Real Madrid, even though he had a previous spell with them, as his story there is ongoing.
The place where Mourinho enjoyed some of his greatest highs at the peak of his tactical powers.
Mourinho only spent two years with Inter, but they made the most of their time together.
A Scudetto in his debut season was followed by a famous Treble in his second. That achievement, unprecedented in Italian football, was enough to immortalise him for the blue-and-black half of Milan.
Mourinho sits right alongside the infamous Helenio Herrera as one of the two most popular Inter managers of all time.
When he first returned to San Siro with Roma in 2022, Mourinho was greeted by a ‘Welcome home Jose’ banner and a reprise of old chants from when he was one of Inter’s own.
Mourinho’s first Chelsea spell was absolutely legendary. He declared himself a ‘Special One’, won back-to-back Premier Leagues at the first time of asking and lifted four more domestic cups.
But this isn’t a ranking of how well he did at each club – even if that does sway how he’s perceived by his former fanbases.
Still, Mourinho remains a cult hero at Chelsea, as proven when he returned to Stamford Bridge with Benfica in last season’s Champions League and was greeted by fans chanting his name.
Mourinho has often been a manager Chelsea fans have pined for a return of when things are going wrong.
He did come back for a second spell in 2013, going on to win another Premier League title, but the fact he went on to manage two rivals like Manchester United and Spurs could have taken the gloss off his relationship with the Chelsea faithful.
Not too much, though. Any ill feeling instigated by those decisions has long since worn off.
Not only is Mourinho one of Chelsea’s most successful managers, he’s one of their most popular to this day.
Honestly, it was close with Chelsea for second. Roma’s appointment of Mourinho in 2021 was met with huge celebrations in the Italian capital, where memories of his success with Inter were stronger than anything that had happened since.
The fact that no one saw it coming added to the euphoria, giving Roma fans a boost after a disappointing 2020-21 season that culminated in a sixth-placed finish.
Mourinho gave them something to celebrate by the end of his first season by winning the Europa Conference League to end a 14-year trophy drought for Roma.
He then came ever so close to going one better the season after, when they lost the Europa League final on penalties.
Roma’s progress in Serie A under Mourinho wasn’t as obvious, but those European runs went down in club history and helped to romanticise how his second Italian job would be perceived.
Various banners were unfurled at Roma’s first game after Mourinho’s sacking in January 2024, mostly reflecting on the theme of him “defending” the club and its fans.
“They understood that I gave everything,” Mourinho reflected on his bond with Roma fans recently. “I made mistakes, I got things wrong, I lost matches, but they always understood that I fought for them.”
In anticipation of his return to the Stadio Olimpico, a fresh mural been spotted in Rome, dedicated to Mourinho.
Hands up, we can’t claim to know too much about Uniao de Leiria’s fans and their thoughts.
Now a second-tier club whose stadium has a capacity of just less than 24,000, UD Leiria are probably the smallest club Mourinho has managed.
It was towards the start of his career, just before his breakthrough with Porto, and only lasted for 20 games.
But it has become something of a badge of honour for UD Leiria to have been connected with someone who went on to be as successful as Mourinho.
He had them flying in the Portuguese top flight in January 2002, which led to him being poached by Porto, but there’s little lasting bitterness over his exit.
Now we get to the complicated, mixed-feelings zone. United’s appointment of Mourinho in 2016 was a controversial one after his past with Chelsea.
“I love Jose Mourinho, but in terms of the type of football he plays I don’t think he is Manchester United,” said former striker Eric Cantona as his appointment was being finalised. It seemed to be a sentiment shared by several fans.
Mourinho gained some appreciation by winning the Europa League and EFL Cup in his debut season, but it was his runners-up finish in the Premier League the following year that he famously declared as “one of the best jobs of my career”.
For a club of United’s pedigree, those comments were certainly controversial. But time has been kind to Mourinho and the perception of his United spell, with the club yet to do any better since.
To a degree, he’s been vindicated. And despite the toxicity that clouded the end of his Old Trafford reign, there are plenty of United fans who realise it.
He has a strong case for being their best manager post-Ferguson.
If it’s a tad surprising to see this entry ranked just below United, Mourinho’s relationship with Porto became somewhat complicated – if it wasn’t already – when he took charge of their rivals Benfica in 2025.
Previously, he’d achieved the incredible by winning the Champions League with Porto in 2004 as he really started to build his legacy. That remains one of his crowning glories and one of Porto’s most historic moments, but there’s been a degree of tension for some fans since they went their separate ways.
It wasn’t necessarily helped by his move to Benfica, even if he’d been there before Porto in the first place.
“I didn’t come to Benfica to upset Porto,” Mourinho insisted after making his return to Portuguese football. But he also acknowledged how he didn’t get any applause when he’d been back to Porto as Chelsea boss.
Some Porto fans still revere him, but others have harboured a grudge for a while, unhappy with how he conducted himself while negotiating his move to Chelsea.
Lo and behold, when his Benfica side faced Porto last season, Mourinho was met by a banner reading: “There’s only one Special One – Futebol Clube Porto.”
For a long time, Benfica fans were left to wonder what might have been. Mourinho took his first steps as a manager there, but only got 11 games in charge before resigning, caught up in the crossfire of a presidential battle off the pitch.
Mourinho returned to Benfica a quarter of a century later with a much more established track record. But the reception to his return was mixed. Some fans dared to dream with big expectations, others questioned his ability in the present day.
He guided Benfica to an unbeaten season, but there were too many draws for them to be in contention for the league title.
Like when he was appointed, the reaction to his exit was mixed. Benfica knew their place in the pecking order and that they were unable to prevent the lure of a Real Madrid return, but the chance to start a new era under Marco Silva left some of their supporters ambivalent after the frustration Mourinho’s return had culminated in.
Just like he had at Roma, Mourinho got a heroic reception from a Fenerbahce fanbase who could scarcely believe they’d managed to attract him.
“Normally a coach is loved after victories. In this case I feel that I am loved before the victories,” Mourinho observed at his unveiling.
However, the devotion didn’t last. He spent little over a year in Turkey, but failed to win a trophy. That sort of thing doesn’t go down too well with a fanbase as passionate as Fener’s, especially when arch-rivals Galatasaray were the team pipping them to the league title.
Things took another turn for the worse when Mourinho later said he had “made a mistake” choosing Fenerbahce and that “it wasn’t my level.”
You guessed it, that sort of thing doesn’t go down too well with a fanbase as passionate as Fener’s either.
Spurs are the absolute outlier as a club where the majority of fans were sceptical of Mourinho from the start and still view his reign negatively.
He inspired some good results, but was always a stylistic misfit after Mauricio Pochettino’s popular reign. His past with rivals Chelsea made it an uphill battle from the get go to get his new fans onside.
There are those who would have preferred to keep him in charge for the 2021 EFL Cup final, but most Spurs fans were glad to see the back of Mourinho by the time all was said and done.