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Special offers for the Special One! Jose Mourinho could choose from Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool for his England return | Mail OnlineJose Mourinho would appear to be on special offer. Available at the right price and ready for delivery to England this summer.
Right now, he would almost certainly say it ain’t so.
He reacted furiously to the publication of a recent interview that suggested a return to the Barclays Premier League could not come soon enough, insisting that he intended to honour a contract with Inter Milan that, because of an extension he signed in May, runs to June 30, 2012.
He's a celebrity...get him out of there: Mourinho insists he is happy at Inter - but sources claim he wants a return to England
But those closest to the former Chelsea manager insist he is far from content in Italy.
That, given half a chance, he would be back here in a flash. While nothing is ever straight-forward with the self-anointed Special One, his most likely suitors at Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool might just want to consider how they would respond should he suddenly become available.
Would they sit back and allow him to manage a major rival?
Or would drastic changes be made to accommodate him?
Mourinho has said he longs for stability; that he wants to stick around long enough in his next job to make a lasting impression and build something more significant. He says Sir Alex Ferguson is a one-off but he wouldn’t mind being to a club what Arsene Wenger has been to Arsenal.
The boss: Mourinho was a popular figure at Stamford Bridge
Which means it could be some time before the brightest young manager in European football is back on the market. That if they want a guy who has won five league titles in seven seasons in three countries, not to mention a European Cup and countless domestic cups, it could be now or never.
At this moment, Liverpool and City continue to stand by Rafa Benitez and Mark Hughes and nobody at Old Trafford is about to ask Ferguson to step aside.
But nobody admires Mourinho more than Ferguson and it would be fascinating to see if the 67-year-old would choose to synchronise his retirement at United with the Portuguese’s departure from the San Siro.
Ferguson being Ferguson, he would probably prefer that date to be June 30, 2012.
But he sees Mourinho as one of the few men with the ability, and personality, to succeed him and so, it seems, do key members of the Old Trafford hierarchy.
There was a time when Mourinho seemed unmanageable. When his outbursts damaged not just his own image but that of Chelsea.
Chin up: Mourinho took to the English game like duck to water
He was branded an ‘enemy of football’ by one senior UEFA official for his scathing criticism of referee Anders Frisk, and Roman Abramovich did not appreciate how his manager’s outbursts were hindering Chelsea’s progress in being welcomed to European football’s top table.
At United, however, they see changes in Mourinho. They see a more mature manager with more humility after his experiences at Chelsea and Inter, and they see someone who was utterly charming when he came to Old Trafford last season for the first knock-out stage of the Champions League.
They also see him, Sportsmail understands, as someone chief executive David Gill could work with.
Yet he has had his problems in Italy. He seemed to settle there well enough, with Inter renting him a private villa at the stunning Villa d’Este on the banks of Lake Como.
Teacher and student: Sir Alex Ferguson holds Mourinho in high esteem
Guests recalled how they saw him enjoying the hotel putting green with his wife and children and their now infamous Yorkshire Terrier, Leya.
But it was not long before he clashed with his rivals and with the media.
He accused the Italian press of ‘intellectual prostitution’ for the way they supported the all-Italian trio of Carlo Ancelotti, now at Chelsea but then at Milan, Luciano Spalletti and Claudio Ranieri.
And he incensed the same managers last season by declaring they would win ‘zero titles’.
There were also high-profile disputes with two other favourite sons of Italy — Marcello Lippi and Fabio Cannavaro.
As well as the Italian Super Cup, Mourinho won the Scudetto in his first season at Inter by 10 points and, thanks to a 1-0 defeat of Fiorentina at the weekend, sits seven points clear in the current campaign.
But he was criticised for his failure to improve on the European performances of his predecessor, Roberto Mancini, and this time around they need to beat Russian league leaders FC Rubin Kazan at the San Siro in their final group game to progress to the last 16.
For all the controversy he generated, Mourinho loved his time in England in a way that he does not seem to be enjoying Italy.
He embraced the country when he first arrived, giving his opening press conference as Inter manager in Italian after declaring that he had learned the language ‘in three weeks’.
But his allies say he is not that passionate about the culture or the ultra-defensive, catenaccio style of football.
The English, he felt, understood him and they understood his rather mischievous sense of humour.
In his view, they could see when lines were delivered with a wry smile and, after leaving Stamford Bridge, he referred to his encounters with the press as ‘the salt and pepper of my day’.
‘England is the country, and my football is English football,’ he said in that aforementioned interview.
It might have been followed by a statement insisting he had been misrepresented, but he was not kidding anyone.
Least of all two or three clubs in north-west England.
Read more: Special offers for the Special One! Jose Mourinho could choose from Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool for his England return | Mail Online
are you warming to him more now than before?
