Jose Mourinho could retire today and he would still be considered one of football’s greatest ever managers.
The Portuguese coach, who made a name for himself by winning the treble with Porto in 2003, has risen to the top of the managerial ranks with successful spells at Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
He’s now attempting to work his magic at Manchester United and just a few weeks into his second season, there’s plenty of reasons to expect silverware to arrive at Old Trafford in the immediate future.
That 2002-03 season, in which Mourinho won the Primera Liga, Taça de Portugal and UEFA Cup in his first full season in charge of Porto, was enough to attract interest from Europe.
And he became the most sought after manager in the sport when he led the Portuguese club to victory in the Champions League the following year.
But perhaps Mourinho’s greatest season to date came when he led Inter Milan to the treble in 2010.
It was the first time an Italian club had won Serie A, the Champions League and the Copa Italia in the same season, and new details about Mourinho’s tenure at the San Siro reveal the lengths he would go in order to succeed.
Mourinho moved training from morning to evening
Inter possessed one of the world’s finest right-backs in Maicon but according to Romanian forward Ianis Zicu, who spent six years at the club, the Brazilian would very often arrive to training on a Monday drunk.
So what did Mourinho do? Instead of reprimanding the player, he would instead move Monday’s training session from the morning to the evening to allow Maicon enough time to recover.
"At Inter, Mourinho had a player who was often drunk on Mondays... Maicon,” Zicu told Digi Sport, per the Mirror.
“Mourinho once called the lads together and asked them, ‘how can we get Maicon in position?’
“After that, he decided to move the session to the evening. And that’s how it went.
“They didn’t train in the morning, but they did in the evening so that Maicon could recover for training.
"These situations can happen in a team, and that team must make a decision.”
It speaks volumes about how much Mourinho valued Maicon that he was willing to drastically alter Inter’s training regime just to accommodate him.
A less valuable player would have been dumped in the reserves.