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

José Mourinho walks out onto the Anoeta Stadium pitch in San Sebastian in May 2013. Photograph: Joseba Etxaburu/Reuters

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.

José Mourinho goes head to head with Vinícius Júnior during the Champions League tie between Benfica and Real Madrid in Lisbon in February. Photograph: José Sena Goulão/EPA

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.