Twenty-five years later, Jose Mourinho will once again take charge of Benfica. After negotiations between both parties, the 62-year-old Portuguese coach left Barcelona late Wednesday afternoon and travelled by charter flight to Tires Aerodrome, where he landed at 18:22 local time.
"I have nothing to say to you. Before I got on the plane, they asked if I might be interested. I said yes. Benfica asked me if I was interested, and I said that when I got back to Portugal, I'd be happy to talk to people. If I return to Benfica, it's not a career celebration," he told journalists.
"Benfica officially asked me if I was interested. I said that I was abroad and that when I returned, I would be interested in talking to people," explained the Portuguese coach.
"I left my previous club four weeks ago. If you ask me if I was expecting to stay until the end of the season without coaching, that's not my nature. I wanted to get back in. I didn't want to say yes to a club that wasn't the right one, just because I'm a workaholic.
"When I was faced with the possibility of coaching Benfica, I didn't think twice in the sense of 'I'm interested, I'd like to'. Which coach says no to Benfica? Not me," added Mourinho, who also spoke about Bruno Lage.
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"I know the feeling, I know what he's feeling. He needs to grieve. There's no coach who leaves happy, thinking it could have been different. I look at him with immense respect because I went through the same thing recently.
"I'll repeat what I said about him a month ago: he's a great coach who had an important squad, whom I congratulated. And I'm not an example of fair play. It wasn't easy to say that they deserved to win.
"All I have for Bruno is respect and the best for his career. He knows that my return to Portugal wasn't planned, but what was on my mind as a natural consequence for my career would be to return to Portugal one day to coach the national team," said the coach, who was also confronted with the statements of Ali Koc, president of Fenerbahce, who said that it was a "strange coincidence of life" for Mourinho to return to Benfica.
"Whenever I left clubs, I closed the chapter and didn't respond to provocations, I didn't look for excuses, I didn't blame anyone, and I always left with that way of being in life. He has a different way of acting. He's spoken a lot, but he hasn't explained why the player who knocked us out (Kerem Akturkoglu) was only bought after he knocked us out. Let's see what happens," he replied.
Mourinho will reportedly sign a contract with Benfica valid until June 2027, and should make his debut on the bench on Saturday, against AFS, at Vila das Aves, in the sixth round of the league.
As well as Mourinho, Joao Tralhao, who is returning to the Reds, Antonio Dias and Pedro Machado will also join the new coaching staff, where Ricardo Rocha and Nuno Santos, who worked under Bruno Lage, are expected to remain.