In case you missed it, Jose Mourinho got pretty angry at the officials after he was sent to the stands in Fenerbahce’s 1-1 draw with Manchester United in the Europa League on Thursday night.
“I think the best thing I have to do is when I leave Fenerbahce, I go to a club that doesn’t play UEFA competitions,” Mourinho said after the game. “So you find a club in England from the bottom of the table, needs a coach in two years, I am ready to go. And I don’t want to say any more about it.”
Referee Clement Turpin handed Mourinho his marching orders after he appealed for a penalty when right-back Bright Osayi-Samuel appeared to be caught by Manuel Ugarte in the second half.
While it’s likely nothing more than a characteristically cheeky off-hand comment in response to the red card, it got us thinking: which Premier League club, not in European competition, would Mourinho suit best?
Here, The Athletic’s Elias Burke and our club experts analyse his suitability and potential fan reaction should Mourinho find himself at a club outside England’s current continental seven — and ranked the candidates.
13. Brighton and Hove Albion
File this under: Absolutely no chance of happening.
Brighton are the Premier League’s chief hipsters, and while Mourinho is many things, hipster is not one of them. Fabian Hurzeler has had an encouraging start to life as boss, with the south coast club currently sitting fifth and looking likely to contend for a European spot.
To undo years of work in developing a club culture centred on exciting and talented young coaches and players to bring in a new era headed by Mourinho is something the club won’t do, and most fans would be very happy that is the case.
Elias Burke
12. Brentford
Appointing Mourinho would initially excite Brentford’s fanbase as he is one of the most recognisable figures in modern football. Mourinho has managed some of the world’s biggest clubs and moving to this quiet part of west London would represent a significant change of pace, pressure and attention.
Mourinho would have the difficult task of following Thomas Frank — the most important and influential head coach in Brentford’s recent history. Frank and Mourinho are both charismatic with the media and can be pragmatic with their tactics but that is where the similarities end.
Frank has turned talented young players into stars at Brentford, including Ivan Toney and Bryan Mbeumo, but Mourinho tends to buy the finished product. Frank rarely complains about refereeing decisions and Mourinho’s constant mind games would take some getting used to. Frank has a great relationship with the club’s senior figures. It is easy to imagine Mourinho being a bit more abrasive when he is told to promote a striker from the B team instead of spending millions in the transfer market.
Brentford’s unofficial motto over the last decade has been “confident but humble”. It’s fair to say Mourinho would probably be a bit too overconfident for this match to work.
Jay Harris
11. Bournemouth
Like Brentford and Brighton, Mourinho’s style and swagger feels ideologically at odds with Bournemouth.
Despite being one of the league’s smaller clubs, Bournemouth have consistently punched above their weight in the Premier League. Their 12th-placed finish under exciting coach Andoni Iraola last season felt significant in establishing themselves as a club here to stay in the top flight.
There’s no situation Mourinho enjoys more than being the backs-to-the-wall underdogs, and he would thrive in creating that environment at the tight 11,379-seater Vitality Stadium. However, given the work Iraola has done in the past year in developing the footballing philosophy, it would prove a significant deviation from the club’s new identity to appoint Mourinho.
Elias Burke
10. Fulham
Large sections of the Fulham fanbase would undoubtedly hold strong reservations if Mourinho, a Chelsea legend, were appointed at Craven Cottage — but imagine, just for a second, how they’d feel if that same icon of the other side of west London delivered their first major trophy.
Given how Fulham have started the season under Marco Silva, seeing his compatriot replace him on the touchline seems unlikely. Fulham are a young attacking team, and fans would likely not take warmly to Mourinho sacrificing exciting forwards like Emile Smith Rowe to ensure defensive stability.
He wouldn’t be the first of the Mourinho bloodline to defect to Craven Cottage, after the “Special Son”, goalkeeper Jose Mourinho Jr. left Chelsea to join Fulham’s youth team in 2015. Mourinho Sr. on the black-and-white side of west London, however, feels far less probable.
Elias Burke
9. Ipswich Town
Mourinho likes a squad packed with established stars, and frankly, he won’t find many at Portman Road.
Ipswich defied the odds to achieve back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League under Kieran McKenna, one of Mourinho’s assistant coaches during his Manchester United tenure. While that’s fostered a siege mentality within the club, driving belief from the fans into the players that they can achieve results regardless of the opposition, it means they do not have the budget or status to sign the stars Mourinho is used to working with.
And while some of their players may be on board with Mourinho, the job McKenna has done in recent years is such that very few replacements, even those with Mourinho’s status, will feel like an upgrade for the fans. He’s also never taken charge of a Premier League game while in the relegation zone, so his survival credentials are yet to be tested.
Elias Burke
8. Southampton
Well, Southampton went with Mourinho-lite when they appointed Nathan Jones: aggressive, combative and less polished than Mourinho but still a headline generator, not always (rarely) for the right reasons. From a coaching viewpoint, Southampton aimed to be aggressive and direct in possession and parked themselves deep in several formations. The experiment was over in a flash and led to Southampton being desperate for a complete gear shift — enter Russell Martin.
Martin has crafted a high-possession, extremely patient style drilled into players every day. If they fancied going from chalk to cheese and back to chalk again, Mourinho would tick the box. But, let us be honest, his star is on the wane and no realistic supporter (unless you lean into the “he’ll get a reaction” side of the debate) would be enthralled about the appointment.
Jacob Tanswell
7. Newcastle
Newcastle’s owners are not averse to a big-name manager, and Mourinho’s agent Matt O’Donohue has a good relationship with former owner Amanda Staveley, who is still close with chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan.
However, Newcastle’s current problems are more linked to attacking chemistry than defensive solidity. Mourinho may not be the man to fix that — an overly defensive set-up may well frustrate Newcastle’s supporters.
That said, Mourinho knows how to win a cup — and if he delivered a first major trophy since 1955, his style would be the least of anyone’s worries.
Jacob Whitehead
6. Nottingham Forest
Mourinho has revealed in the past that he was a fan of Nottingham Forest — and specifically the side that won back-to-back European Cups under Brian Clough in 1979 and 1980.
When he was working with Barcelona in 1996, Mourinho took a trip to Nottingham to explore the city where Clough put a provincial football club on the world map.
Mourinho was asked to write the foreword for the book written by The Athletic’s Danny Taylor on that era, titled I Believe in Miracles.
He said: “I walked all the way (around the city) and when I saw the stadium I thought: ‘Are you kidding me — this club won the European Cup? Twice?’
“It was a nice stadium and a nice city, but it was a small place. It was the size of the stadium that really took me aback. History cannot delete what he and Nottingham Forest did — their results, the cups, the achievements, absolutely unbelievable achievements.
“I have huge respect for what they did. I think if Brian Clough was around today, we would get on.”
Mourinho’s star might have faded just a little in recent years, but as a former Champions League and Premier League winner himself, he still has the kind of CV that would pique the interest of the Forest hierarchy if they were looking for a new manager.
It would also represent exactly the kind of challenge that Mourinho has hinted he would be looking for.
But with Nuno Espirito Santo doing an impressive job of establishing the club as a familiar face in the Premier League, the position is unlikely to be vacant for a while yet.
Paul Taylor
5. Leicester
Leicester City don’t do boring — neither does Mourinho, so they could be the perfect pairing!
If Mourinho wanted a quiet, mid-table club to ease into the final years of his illustrious career, then Leicester would not be the right fit.
Mourinho loves drama, and whether it is chasing the elite of the Premier League, battling relegation, promotion challenges, or trophies, the last decade at Leicester has been eventful. He also loves a confrontation with authority, and Leicester’s PSR (Profit and Sustainability rules) challenges with the Premier League and EFL would give him plenty to sink his teeth into. The press conferences would be entertaining, too.
Rob Tanner
4. Everton
On one hand, there’s a sort of symmetry between Mourinho and Everton. A manager who seems to be followed by chaos and controversy, and a club that has been immersed in both for far too long.
Common sense would suggest Everton, as they embark on their new era under new owners at a modern stadium, should steer clear of someone like the former Chelsea boss. As one supporter said on X, Everton should aim to be boring and stable off the pitch and exciting on it. It’s debatable whether you get that under the Portuguese.
He would undoubtedly be a ‘statement’ arrival at Everton. But Evertonians have had their fingers burned by statement signings and managerial appointments under Farhad Moshiri — see the summer of three No 10s, or the ships passing through like Ronald Koeman and Carlo Ancelotti.
And yet Mourinho, even an apparently diminished version, is still a serial winner. For a club so starved of success as Everton, that’s not a prospect which is easy to dismiss. Dig further and you can probably find echoes of Joe Royle’s Dogs of War, the last team to win a trophy at Goodison in 1995, in the battling, intense football Mourinho creates.
Ultimately it would depend on the appetite of Dan Friedkin to work again with a manager he sacked in January after they worked together at Serie A side Roma — and, of course, hinges on the outcome of any review of Sean Dyche’s suitability to continue.
A Mourinho appointment would likely split opinion at Everton, but then most appointments — barring Ancelotti — have during the last tumultuous decade.
Greg O’Keeffe
3. Crystal Palace
More than once in the past, Mourinho has expressed his admiration for Crystal Palace’s supporters. Adjectives used have been “noisy” and “fantastic”. To the extent that, Palace fans, on occasion, sang “Jose’s a Palace fan,” when he gave a thumbs up to the travelling support at Stamford Bridge in May 2015 as a means of criticising the Chelsea support. That became a regular chant when Mourinho played Palace.
For that alone, there would be some support at least for a Mourinho-led Palace side.
Matt Woosnam
2. Wolves
On one hand, Mourinho at Wolves would be an obvious fit given that his long-term agent, Jorge Mendes, still has an influence at Molineux, albeit a decreased one in recent years.
And the Portuguese-speaking contingent of the squad would doubtless welcome him, along with a section of supporters who would enjoy his blunt, pragmatic approach to the game.
But given Mourinho’s tendency to get dragged into club politics in his more recent roles, it is hard to see how he could help himself weighing in publicly at a club where transfer goalposts have often appeared to move in recent windows.
It might be entertaining but it probably wouldn’t last for long.
Steve Madeley
1. West Ham
West Ham went looking for a manager to guide them into a brave new world post-David Moyes and landed on Julen Lopetegui, but the Spaniard has struggled to get to grips with life at the London Stadium.
Lopetegui might still have some credit in the bank, but a run of poor results between now and Christmas will increase pressure on the club’s board to make a decision. Mourinho, who was linked with the job in 2023 while in charge of Roma, will tick many boxes for a boardroom that is partial to a big name.
West Ham have developed a habit of employing managers who have previously managed Europe’s biggest clubs, and Mourinho embodies that profile. Once considered one of the world’s best managers and undoubtedly a legend of the English game, this could be his final chance to repair a reputation that took a hit at Manchester United and Tottenham in returning the east London club to European competition.
As he does almost everywhere, he’ll split the fanbase — with many wanting the club to appoint a younger coach with fresher ideas — and create divisions within the players and higher-ups. But, aside from an ill-fated period in north London, Mourinho typically gets the best out of his star players and delivers trophies.
After tasting success with Moyes, supporters won’t care about off-the-field drama if West Ham’s cabinet adds more silverware. Winning a trophy with the east Londoners will surely feel even sweeter for Mourinho, after he was sacked by their north London rivals in 2021 with a Carabao Cup final on the horizon.
Elias Burke
(Top photo: Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images)
