Irish Sunday Mirror

Mourinho wants to boss until he’s 70

- BY SIMON MULLOCK Chief Football Writer

to Spain, for sure. Things I really wanted to do. At this moment, there isn’t anything I have around the corner waiting because I want to do something different. “I really don’t want to do anything different to what I am doing now.” Mourinho hailed himself as ‘The Special One’ after he won the Champions League for Porto aged 41 in 2004, and took over at Chelsea. He claimed successive Premier League titles at Stamford Bridge before moving to Italy to make Inter Milan champions of Europe. And he then guided Real Madrid to the La Liga title before going back to Chelsea to win the Premier League again in 2015. Mourinho believes he has got better with age. He said: “Up until the point you lose your motivation, you keep improving. Sometimes people say ‘Enough is enough, I don’t want more’, but until that I think it is the kind of job where experience makes you better.

“I am better in every way. From the motivation­al point of view, I am the same, nothing has changed.

“My passion for the job is the same, but my sense of responsibi­lity and emotional control is better.

“Obviously I am much more mature at every level. In training, in matches, in relations with players. It feels like everything is deja vu.

“It is very unusual that there is something in my profession­al life I am surprised by or I don’t know how to react, as I’ve had it all before.

“So, yes, it is a job where the more experience you have, the better you are. You have the example now of Jupp Heynckes at Bayern Munich.

“He was retired, playing with his grandchild­ren, and suddenly he comes back to football and he is even better than before.”

Mourinho added: “Arsene isn’t dead so it is not the end. I don’t think he ends his career now. Until I have different informatio­n, he is only going to end his career as Arsenal manager.

“I am going to remember him as a big opponent, as the manager of the Invincible­s.

“When I arrived in this country, Arsenal had the Invincible­s and that made me a better coach. That is the way I would remember him.”

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