Thirteen years in the making: Madrid’s search for a saviour set to end in Mourinho return

The last time José Mourinho was at the Santiago Bernabéu, he parked up in the bus. That night in late February the Benfica manager was suspended, a red card from the first leg of the Champions League playoff meaning he wasn’t allowed on the touchline he had prowled 13 years and a lifetime ago, so Real Madrid prepared a media booth for him to watch from. Situated on the eighth floor, Spanish radio to the left of him, Portuguese to the right, Cabin No 6 had been supplied with nuts, fruit, salad and jamón sandwiches. As kick-off approached, a crowd gathered by the door. But if the camera phones were out, he wasn’t.

Mourinho never showed. Instead, he stayed in the basement 10 floors below, watching from an iPad on board the bus and leaving the post-match press conference to his assistant, João Tralhão. The next time he comes, which could be as soon as this season ends, it is likely to be different, poised to be welcomed back as a saviour and their manager now, not hidden away. For a while his has been the only candidate’s name that has remained constant and never dismissed from within, seeming more real with every day.

On Friday Mourinho said he had the offer of a contract extension from Benfica but claimed he had not looked at it and would not do so until after Benfica’s final game on Sunday. Madrid’s season finishes seven days later and, although no one admits it, there has been an approach from there too, conversations. A clause in Mourinho’s contract means he can leave Benfica during the 10 days after the season ends. Florentino Pérez’s unexpected call for elections could yet bring a surprise, but he will probably be returned to the presidency unopposed on 24 May, the day Madrid’s season finishes, which all fits rather nicely.

So it is set, what seemed impossible probable now. Some things change fast and change back again faster. And yet many have waited a very, very long time for this.

Before the Benfica tie, Mourinho said he had not set foot in the Bernabéu since departing in May 2013 and there had been excitement, a touch of nostalgia too. With the passage of time, the bad moments had faded, just the aura left. Álvaro Arbeloa referred to him as “uno de noi”, one of us, and he referred to Arbeloa as one of his “kids”. As ever, he spoke warmly of Pérez. “I gave everything to Madrid,” the Portuguese coach said. “My feeling over these years is that Madrid fans feel what I do: respect and affection. But there’s nothing doing with Madrid. I’d like Arbeloa to win the league and stay for many years.”

The idea that one day Mourinho might return had hung in the air, if not really as a serious possibility. “I don’t want to feed stories that don’t exist,” Mourinho said before the first leg. His criticism of Vinícius Júnior’s goal celebration after it, when the Brazilian alleged he had been subject to abuse, made a return even less likely, the context changing. “We can’t project the victim as a provoker,” Arbeloa said. “In the end, Mourinho is Mourinho,” Thibaut Courtois added. “The only thing that disappoints me a bit is him using Vini’s celebration.” Pérez too had been disappointed.

Yet Madrid’s president was not nearly as disappointed as he would become with the season, watching as Madrid collapse into a crisis and the list of candidates diminishes, leading towards the only man perceived to have the force of personality to fix this.

At the end of Mourinho’s final night as Madrid coach in 2013, the press conference room stood empty, the manager refusing to show. Sent off in the Copa del Rey final they had just lost to Atlético Madrid, he had not appeared in the royal box either, the king asking the federation president: “What, do I give [the medal] to this guy then?” when his assistant Aitor Karanka arrived instead. Deeply divisive, fault lines opening up among fans as well as the squad, it had ended badly, that third season a year too far. It was also further than most managers get at the Bernabéu. Looking back this February Mourinho described them as “intense and almost violent” years. His relationship with several members of his squad, Sergio Ramos and Iker Casillas among them, was broken. Jerzy Dudek recalled how Mourinho felt “stabbed in the back”, left with “a scar on his soul”. When he was presented as manager of Chelsea, he described himself as “the happy one”, which was telling.

In truth, everyone knew they could not carry on like this, and yet there were some who wanted him to walk back in from virtually the day he walked out. That was about character, personality, his willingness to wage war in the place where Pep Guardiola famously called him the “puto amo”, the “puto jefe”: the fucking boss, the fucking master. It was about how they had competed, how if they were beaten by Barcelona they beat them too, the narrative around success shifting depending on the trench from which it was shouted to the extent that according to his advocates what came next belonged to him even in absentia.

“I won’t ever forget what the president said when I left,” Mourinho revealed in February: ‘Now comes the easy part; the hard part is done.’” This week Pérez said Mourinho had made them competitive again, reaching three Champions League semi-finals after six years without winning a knockout tie. “And from there we won six European Cups in 10 years” – however different the profiles of Zinedine Zidane and Carlo Ancelotti, the men who lifted the trophies.

“I must be one of the few coaches from Madrid to leave without being sacked,” Mourinho said. Only three of the 13 coaches Pérez has appointed as president lasted more than a year. The other two – Ancelotti and Zidane – returned; only Mourinho is left. One of the contradictions resides in Pérez resenting managers’ weakness, their irrelevance, while not investing them with the authority to overcome that, to impose, welcoming an iron fist without following through on that idea. In the simplest terms, the president has never truly trusted coaches, expendable figures who often just get in the way.

The one, great exception was Mourinho. And, for all the doubts – for all that he couldn’t, could he? – for all that having him coach Vinícius after what happened last time, for all that the president admits there are those telling him not to go near Mourinho, and for all that the reality may not meet the romanticised recollections, deep down Pérez has always liked the idea of him coming back. Now, more than ever, after two years without a major trophy, with Barcelona predominant again, with another battle real to wade into, inside and out.

Crisis calls and the worse the leaks got, the more public Madrid’s troubles, the better Mourinho’s credentials looked, the easier to justify a return 13 not entirely successful years later. Desperate times call for desperate measures, something different; the bigger the problem, the bigger the personality needed, someone with the authority to address the egos and take on the internal and external enemies with which Pérez is preoccupied. One significant element of his extraordinary, accusatory, conspiratorial press conference on Tuesday, at which the mask slipped and the public persona at last reflected the private, was how Mourinho it was. Deep down, they were always alike. And so the idea that always lingered appears to be taking shape 13 years on, the ground prepared once again, the touchline awaiting this time.