Jose Mourinho's Heartfelt Decision: The Handshake That Changed Football
Jose Mourinho has finally confirmed the story that has circled Premier League folklore for a decade: he shook hands on succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United – then walked away to return to Chelsea.
In a new Netflix documentary on his career, Mourinho lifts the lid on the sliding-doors moment that could have rewritten modern English football.
“When I left Real Madrid, I signed to go to Manchester United after Sir Alex,” he says. No ambiguity. No myth. A deal agreed.
Ferguson, who had just closed the book on 26 years at Old Trafford and 13 Premier League titles, backed that up. “I sat him down and explained the situation,” he recalls. “As far as I was concerned, he was accepting. And then, within hours, it changed.”
Within hours, the future of three clubs changed with it.
The night Mourinho called Ferguson in tears
What changed was not United’s offer, nor Ferguson’s conviction. It was Mourinho’s heart.
Chelsea, where he had become “The Special One”, had come calling. The club where he ripped up the Premier League order in 2005 and 2006, winning back-to-back titles, wanted him home. And Mourinho felt he could not turn them down.
Ferguson remembers the call that killed United’s plan. “One night, he phoned me and he was crying. He said: ‘Alex, I can't take it. I've given my word to Chelsea and I'm not going to break my word.’”
For Ferguson, it was a rare defeat off the pitch. “The reason he gave to me I could understand, but I was disappointed,” he admits. United’s succession plan had just vanished down the line to Stamford Bridge.
Mourinho, even now, carries the weight of that choice. He speaks of being “very flattered” by the chance to replace Ferguson, describing Manchester United as a club with “incredible appeal”. But the pull of Stamford Bridge cut deeper.
“One thing is love for football, another thing is love for a certain club,” he says. “I think this is more powerful than love for football and, fundamentally, after Real Madrid I needed to feel that I'm loved.
“For me to lose the chance to be the coach to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson was dramatic, but I don't regret it because it was a decision that I made with my heart.”
The Chosen One who wasn’t Mourinho
With Mourinho out, United turned to David Moyes, then the highly respected Everton manager personally recommended by Ferguson.
Moyes arrived draped in expectation and symbolism. A banner at the Stretford End declared him “The Chosen One”, a title now laced with irony given what we know: the first man United chose was Mourinho.
The experiment lasted just 10 months. Moyes struggled to step out from Ferguson’s shadow, United’s standards slipped, and the club sacked him before he could complete a full season.
Chelsea, by contrast, got exactly what they thought they were buying. Mourinho’s second spell at Stamford Bridge delivered another Premier League title in 2014-15 and a League Cup, proof that the old chemistry between manager, club and supporters still burned.
The two decisions – one man turning back to London, another man stepping into an impossible job in Manchester – shaped both clubs’ trajectories in the post-Ferguson era.
United’s second chance
United did eventually get their man. In 2016, three years after that emotional phone call to Ferguson, Mourinho walked through the doors at Carrington at the second time of asking, this time as Louis van Gaal’s successor.
His Old Trafford reign lasted two and a half years. It never brought the Premier League title he once seemed destined to chase in Ferguson’s footsteps, but it did add silverware: the League Cup and the Europa League, both in 2016-17, restoring a taste of major success to a club still reeling from its greatest manager’s departure.
By December 2018, a slump in results ended his time in Manchester. The partnership that almost began in 2013 closed with a sense of unfinished business.
The revelation that Mourinho had first agreed to take the job, only to turn it down in tears, sharpens that feeling. It invites the question that will hang over both his legacy and United’s modern history: what would the post-Ferguson years have looked like if he had kept his word to Old Trafford, rather than to Stamford Bridge?
