José Mourinho is back at Real Madrid, 13 years after his first spell ended in arguments, dressing-room divisions and the feeling that one of football's most intense relationships had simply run its course. He is 63 now, Real Madrid have changed enormously since 2013 and so has Mourinho. But as he prepares to take the club back into the Champions League, there is one obvious question hanging over his return: can he finally win this competition with Madrid?
It remains the great unfinished piece of Mourinho's first spell at the Bernabéu. He arrived in 2010 as the reigning European champion after leading Inter Milan to the treble and was hired partly because Madrid were desperate to regain their status in Europe. Mourinho did improve them. After six consecutive exits in the Champions League round of 16 before his arrival, Madrid reached the semi-finals in each of his three seasons. But that was as far as they went. Barcelona stopped them in 2011, Bayern Munich beat them on penalties in 2012 and Borussia Dortmund eliminated them a year later.
The strange thing is what happened immediately afterwards. Mourinho left in 2013 and Real Madrid won the Champions League the following season. Since then, the club have collected six European Cups in little more than a decade. Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane built teams that turned winning this competition into something close to routine. Mourinho, meanwhile, has not won it since that extraordinary Inter side in 2010. His last domestic league title came with Chelsea in 2015.
That history makes his second spell very different from his first. Mourinho is no longer the manager arriving in Madrid to teach a club how to compete in Europe again. Real Madrid certainly do not need lessons in the Champions League. If anything, the challenge has been reversed: Mourinho has returned to the club that mastered the competition during the years in which he gradually disappeared from its final stages.
There are good reasons to believe this version of Madrid gives him a genuine chance. Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior provide the kind of individual quality capable of deciding knockout matches almost regardless of how the game is going, while Jude Bellingham has already spoken positively about the freedom Mourinho has given him in his new role. There is pace, physical power and enough experience in the squad to survive difficult European nights. Mourinho has spent much of his career building teams that are comfortable when matches become tense, ugly and tactical. The Champions League knockout rounds still produce exactly those situations.
There is also a potentially useful contrast between Mourinho and the squad he inherited. Real Madrid have spent years being associated with control through possession, technical superiority and elite attacking talent, but Mourinho has never been embarrassed about winning another way. His best European teams could dominate when required, but they were equally happy defending deep, breaking quickly and making opponents hate every minute of the contest. With Mbappé and Vinícius available in transition, that approach suddenly looks rather more dangerous than old-fashioned.
The early evidence, however, is not enough to declare the experiment a success. Madrid began the league season with three victories before losing 1-0 away to Real Betis on Friday. They created enough chances to win the game, but Troy Parrott scored late for Betis and Mbappé then had a stoppage-time penalty saved by Álvaro Valles. It was Mourinho's first defeat since returning and a reminder that assembling famous attacking players is not the same thing as creating a balanced team.
That balance may ultimately decide Madrid's Champions League season. Mbappé has already had to defend his work without the ball and reject suggestions that playing him alongside Vinícius creates a problem for the team. Those questions will not disappear simply because Mourinho dismisses them. Against Europe's strongest sides, Madrid cannot afford to defend with eight players while waiting for their forwards to decide the game at the other end. Mourinho has to find a structure that gets the best out of his stars without removing the qualities that make them stars in the first place.
His first Champions League game back at Madrid could hardly have been scripted better. Real face Inter Milan, the club Mourinho led to the European title in 2010 and the team responsible for the greatest season of his managerial career. Sixteen years later, he will face them while trying to prove that he can still win the biggest trophy in club football.
Mourinho insists he does not feel additional pressure to deliver the Champions League because he failed to win it during his first spell. That is probably the sensible public answer. Real Madrid do not appoint managers to settle personal scores with history. They appoint them to win trophies, and after two seasons without a major one, expectations are obvious.
But it is difficult to separate Mourinho's return from the competition that made his reputation. Porto in 2004 turned him into the most wanted coach in Europe. Inter in 2010 confirmed that the first triumph was no accident. Real Madrid were supposed to provide the third European Cup and perhaps establish him alongside the very greatest managers in the competition's history. Instead, Madrid became the place where he repeatedly came close.
Now he has been given another chance, one nobody seriously expected 13 years ago when his first spell ended. Real Madrid have nothing left to prove in the Champions League. Mourinho does. And that is what makes his return to the competition so interesting.
Published by Patrick Jane
07.09.2026