Jose Mourinho leaves Fenerbahce after Champions League failure in latest career blow to the ‘special one’

Jose Mourinho’s fall from grace in elite soccer accelerated Friday when the charismatic Portuguese coach left Turkish club Fenerbahce, two days after failing to get back into the Champions League after a long absence.

His latest short managerial spell — this one lasted barely a year, in a second-tier European league — leaves the 62-year-old Mourinho’s career at a crossroads, with top teams potentially no longer wanting to take a chance on a coach whose best days might be behind him.

Fenerbahce’s elimination at the hands of Benfica in a Champions League qualifying playoff on Wednesday was another blow to the status of Mourinho, who once was considered one of the world’s best coaches and famously had a heated rivalry with Pep Guardiola during their time in Spain with Real Madrid and Barcelona, respectively.

A Champions League winner with Porto and Inter Milan, Mourinho has not coached in the main stage of the marquee competition for six seasons. He won the third-tier Conference League with Roma in 2022 but his time at the Italian club from 2021-24 was pock-marked with squabbles that resurfaced in his brief and chaotic spell in Turkey.

Turbulent times in Turkey

There was an incident in April when he grabbed the nose of Galatasaray coach Okan Buruk in the Istanbul derby, earning a three-match ban and a fine.

Indeed, the fiery matches between the two local rivals brought out the worst in Mourinho. Two months earlier, he was handed a four-match ban after making an incendiary comment in the aftermath of a league match against Galatasaray, which announced its intention to start legal proceedings against Mourinho.

Mourinho, who often railed against what he perceived to be poor refereeing in Turkey, wore the look of a frustrated and unhappy man during his time with Fenerbahce.

Gone was the charm and self-confidence that oozed out of the self-styled “Special One” during the peak years at his first spell at Chelsea from 2004-07, for example.

In October, he even said: “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. So you find a club in England from the bottom of the table, needs a coach in two years, I am ready to go.”

Who knows, that might be where Mourinho ends up after his departure from Fenerbahce, whose own absence from the Champions League now stretches to 17 seasons.

“We have parted ways with Jose Mourinho,” Fenerbahce posted to its millions of followers in a short statement on its X and Instagram accounts. “We thank him for his efforts for our team and wish him success in his future career.”

There was no immediate statement on the club’s official website.

What next for Mourinho?

Mourinho was once a serial trophy winner, a guarantee of silverware.

Yet that’s now two clubs — Tottenham (from 2019-21) and Fenerbahce — where he hasn’t guided his team to a title. His career trajectory, meanwhile, is heading downwards: from Real Madrid, to Manchester United, to Tottenham, to Roma and then to Fenerbahce.

Coaching the national team of his native Portugal might be one future option for Mourinho, who established a strong reputation for being a pragmatic, tactically astute manager with an uncanny ability to win one-off matches. Those attributes might serve him well in international soccer.

The days of him leading teams to success in the Champions League or in the top European leagues seem a long way away, however.