Liverpool is searching for a new manager to replace Jürgen Klopp and José Mourinho has noticed that he isn’t on the list. He would never be welcomed at Anfield.
There was a time when José Mourinho would have been near the top of the Liverpool shortlist when searching for a new manager. That time, though, was admittedly now two decades ago.
The Portuguese went on to move to the Premier League with Chelsea and others and now 61 years old, he still has an appetite to return to the game. Amid the search for a new Liverpool manager to take over from Jürgen Klopp, it hasn’t gone unnoticed by Mourinho that his name has not been mentioned, as he has admitted in an interview with The Telegraph.
Having left AS Roma earlier in the year after a run of poor results, Mourinho is out of work. And he feels he should still be in contention for the best jobs in soccer.”It is not like I am 61 and I want to stop at 65,” he said. “No way at all. There is still a long career to go.”
The Liverpool job, though, is not one that will be available to him. Mourinho has shown with his last roles in England — at Manchester United and Spurs — that he is no longer the future of coaching. In any case, he has never been warmly welcomed at Anfield for obvious reasons.
His abrasive style and lack of exciting football mean that Mourinho looks like a thing of the past these days. Not since he left Real Madrid more than a decade ago has he really been viewed as the cutting edge, and that is what Liverpool needs.
It tells you everything you need to know that his next job, he says, doesn’t have to be at the very top level of the game. If it did, he would be waiting for a long time.
“The only thing I want is that the targets and the objectives have to be established by everyone in a fair way,” Mourinho added. “I cannot go to a club where, because of my history, the objective is to win the title. No. The only thing I want is that it has to be fair.”
Liverpool.com says: Mourinho is clearly trying to put himself in the shop window but it will be interesting to see where his career goes next. He will not be managing at one of the very best clubs in the world any time soon and his next role will have to go very well indeed for him to get another shot with the elite. International management would make sense, perhaps with Portugal.