There was a time when José Mourinho was genuinely well-liked in Barcelona. Around the club, particularly among the local media, his good looks led him to be was known as the “Martini Guy.” The nickname was a reference to the star of a famous Martini commercial from the era, featuring the sophisticated, dark-haired heartthrob played by American model Max Parrish. Dressed in a sleek black suit and shielded by sunglasses, Parrish would run his thumb across his lower lip as if wiping away traces of lipstick, not his own, of course. Far from being offended by the comparison, Mourinho took it as a compliment. He would occasionally mimic the gesture in private gatherings and sometimes even while chatting with reporters covering Barcelona. Those were the days when Mourinho enjoyed an excellent relationship with much of Barcelona’s press corps, a group he won over almost immediately.

Mourinho’s appearance, youth and demeanor attracted attention from the outset. Social media did not yet exist, but wild rumors sprang up around him. Some claimed he was homosexual and that his relationship with Bobby Robson went beyond friendship. One journalist, who admits his first thought upon seeing Mourinho was, “Where did this incredibly handsome guy come from?”, struck up a rapport with him and, before an interview, asked about his sexuality. Mourinho did not blink at the question, but his response was unpublishable, even though he insisted it should be included in the interview. The answer involved a reference to the sisters of those spreading the rumor.

When Mourinho arrived in Barcelona, he was an unknown figure. Not just to the local press, but to the soccer world at large. It is also important to remember the turbulent circumstances surrounding his arrival. Months earlier, club president Josep Lluís Núñez had dismissed Johan Cruyff in acrimonious fashion and hired Robson, a longtime object of his admiration. The Englishman was then at Porto after a stint with Sporting CP. He was already 63, entering the twilight of his managerial career, with his greatest successes having come with Ipswich Town in the late 1970s and England during the 1980s. Robson arrived in Barcelona accompanied by Mourinho, whom he had met at Sporting, where the Portuguese had worked as his translator.

“Won over the players right away”

Mourinho, then 33, viewed the move to Barcelona as both a challenge and a promotion. He was transitioning from translator to assistant coach, a status he had to fight hard to establish.

“It bothered him tremendously when people referred to him as a translator because he wasn’t really performing that role,” explains Marcos López, a journalist with El Periódico and contributor to Cadena SER who covered those years from the front row. “That job was initially handled by journalist Graham Turner and later by club employee Txemi Terés. Mourinho was an important member of Robson’s staff.”

Journalist Luis Martín, then working for the newspaper Sport, shares that view: “Mourinho won over the players right away. They were impressed by his soccer knowledge. You’d hear them saying, ‘This guy really knows his stuff.’”

According to Fabián Ortiz, the connection with the squad was partly generational. “Mourinho never really appealed to me. I always saw him as an ambitious climber,” Ortiz says. “But he was young. In terms of age, the players saw Robson as a grandfather figure and Mourinho as an older brother, someone they had much more in common with.” Martín adds that Mourinho’s training methods also felt far more modern than those of the veteran English manager. “Robson was still using methods from the 1970s. To study opponents, he’d gather the squad and make them watch an entire match on video. The players were bored stiff, and sometimes Robson himself would fall asleep. Mourinho was completely different. He was direct, spoke the players’ language and pointed out details about opponents that were genuinely useful. He earned their respect and quickly connected with soccer obsessives like [Pep] Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Abelardo [Fernández] and [Luis] Figo.”

“Mourinho already had a remarkable eye for the game,” López recalls. “He was one of the first coaches at Camp Nou who preferred watching matches from the directors’ box rather than the bench because he felt it gave him a better understanding of what was happening on the field. At halftime he would head down to the locker room and make tactical adjustments.

That tactical acumen made him responsible for scouting reports on Barcelona’s opponents. He effectively combined his assistant coaching duties with responsibilities that today would belong to a performance analyst, a role that hardly existed at the time.

Martín remembers a particularly revealing anecdote. “I ran into him in Belgrade because Barcelona was hosting Red Star Belgrade in the Cup Winners’ Cup the following Wednesday. It was the same weekend Barça were playing Compostela, the game in which Ronaldo scored that famous goal. Mourinho couldn’t watch it live because he had to prepare a report on Barcelona’s upcoming opponent, who was playing in a town about four hours away by car. He rented a white Mercedes with a chauffeur to attend the match in person. On the way, they got a flat tire. The driver struggled to change it, and they were in danger of missing kickoff. In the end, Mourinho changed the tire himself, with help from Sport photographer Javier Ferrándiz, who happened to be driving behind them and stopped to assist. Missing that game was simply not an option.”

“Practically family”

Mourinho’s relationship with the media extended well beyond the soccer field. He was often seen at fashionable nightlife spots, socializing with journalists. One particularly memorable evening came in Solna, where Barcelona was playing a preseason friendly against IF Elfsborg. To everyone’s surprise, the bar they visited happened to be hosting a wet T-shirt contest, which eventually descended into a fistfight among spectators. “The thing that surprised me wasn’t that Mourinho was in that bar,” Ortiz remembers. “It was that he was wearing a Barcelona tracksuit.”

His identification with both Barcelona and Catalonia was total. “I interviewed him in Sitges, where he initially stayed in a hotel before finding a house in town,” López recalls. “He was completely integrated. He felt entirely at home in Catalonia.” Luis Martín agrees. “For many people in Sitges, he was practically family.”

Given HC debut under Van Gaal

When Barcelona hired Louis van Gaal to replace Robson, it seemed inevitable that Mourinho would leave. The Dutchman arrived with his own staff, including Gerard van der Lem and Frans Hoek. But after meeting Mourinho and witnessing his tactical expertise firsthand, Van Gaal decided to keep him on. The Portuguese won him over immediately. The notoriously demanding coach placed such trust in Mourinho that during a Copa Catalunya semifinal he handed him a surprising opportunity: to act as head coach.

Mourinho’s managerial debut came on March 27, 1998, at Lleida’s Camp d’Esports. Coincidentally, it was also the day Xavi Hernández made his first-team debut. Technically speaking, Mourinho was therefore the first coach ever to manage Xavi, even if it was Van Gaal who had given the midfielder his opportunity. Barcelona won 2-1 thanks to a brace from Jofre Mateu. Fate added another curious twist. The goal for UE Lleida, the first ever conceded by Mourinho as a head coach, was scored by Tito Vilanova. It happened 13 years before their paths would cross again in what remains one of the most infamous episodes of Mourinho’s coaching career. And so, the man who was once beloved in Barcelona, the coach they called the “Martini Guy,” returns on Sunday to a place that once felt very much like home.

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