Following a slew of fluttering results and reports of several fall-outs with players, Mourinho was fired at Manchester United in December 2018.

Since his firing, the Portugal coach has been quiet and everyone had been dying to hear from him.

On Thursday, January 17, Mourinho broke his silence during his appearance as a guest pundit on beIN Sports.

Mourinho had a host of interesting things to say about his time at Manchester United, his career and next job. 

There are five things he said. 

Mourinho hinted that his fall-out with a number of players-especially Paul Pogba-led to his sacking at Manchester United.

Speaking at beIN Sports, Mourinho subtle compared the situation with Sir Alex Ferguson and David Beckham severed relationship which led to the player being sold to Real Madrid in 2003.  

“The phrase I kept with me from the biggest one in the Premier League - Sir Alex Ferguson - was ‘the day a player is more important than the club, goodbye’. Not anymore,” Mourinho said. 

“Because there are many things now that means it is difficult to create a situation as linear as this one.

“The balance has to be created in the relations between the players and the manager. The manager is there to coach them. The manager is not there to keep the discipline at any cost. 

“The structure must be there to protect the manager and for the players to feel that everything is in place, and they are not going to arrive into a situation where they feel more powerful than they used to be.

“I don’t like to say it’s a problem between the coach and the player. I think it’s a problem between the coach without the structure behind him and the player. 

“We are not any more in the time where the coach by himself is powerful enough to cope and have a relationship of education, and sometimes confrontation, with players who are not the best professionals. The coaches nowadays need a structure.

“A club must have an owner or a president, a CEO or an executive director, a sports director or a football director, and then the manager. This is a structure that can cope with all the problems that modernity is bringing to all of us.

“So, for me, a club must be very well organised to cope with these kinds of situations, where the manager is only the manager and not the man who is trying to keep the discipline or who are trying to educate the players.”

According to reports, Mourinho has rejected the opportunity to manage Benfica in his home country Portugal and he seemed to have confirmed it by saying he still wants to work at the highest level of club football. 

“I am in football for a long, long time but I will be 56 in a couple of weeks. Really, too young,” Mourinho said. 

“Where I’m going to stay is where I belong. I belong to top-level football and it’s where I’m going to be.” 

Mourinho has had the opportunity of managing some talented teams at some of the biggest clubs in world football and asked to choose the best team of his career so far, the manager paid tribute to his Inter Milan he won a treble with in 2010. 

“I have to say Inter because we won everything,” Mourinho said. 

“So I have to be objective, I have to be respectful to them and to say a team that won everything from day one until the last day, won all the competitions won the treble, beat the best team in the world 3-1, Barcelona, beat Bayern Munich in the final 2-0, won the league in Italy with a fantastic number of points, won the cup, won three finals in 10 days, I have to say the best team.”

Mourinho revealed that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was not sold on the idea of signing an unknown Didier Drogba from Marseille in 2004. 

According to Mourinho, Abramovich wanted a more high profile name and was surprised at the choice of the manager but he told the owner to ‘pay and don’t speak’. 

“Drogba is the kind of guy who is so loyal that he never forgot that I took him from Marseille to the Premier League, where he was not even expected because he didn’t start very young at that level,” Mourinho said.

“He had already played for Guingamp, Marseille, Le Mans, so when I took him to Chelsea I remember clearly Abramovich was asking me, ‘Who? Who do you want as a striker?’

“With all the big names in Europe at that time, I said Drogba. ‘Who is he? Where’s he playing?’ (I said) 'Mr Abramovich – pay. pay, and don’t speak.

“And Didier was an iconic player for Chelsea, for the Premier League."

Mourinho during his appearance as a guest pundit paid tribute to his former goalkeeper Petr Cech who had just announced he would be retiring at the end of the season. 

Mourinho was the manager that gave Cech his first shot in the Premier League when he arrived in Chelsea in 2004. 

“Petr Cech was a kid, I didn't buy him when I arrived at Chelsea, Chelsea had already made the decision to buy him in 2004. But when I arrived in Chelsea he was a kid like 20 years old,” Mourinho said.”

"The goalkeeper was Carlo Cudicini - the season before he was elected the player of the season - and the first game of the season was Chelsea against Manchester United and I decided to leave out our player of the season before, and play a kid that nobody would know how to even say his name because Petr Cech was quite difficult to say.

"After that, everything was about him. My influence was zero.

"Fantastic professional and goalkeeper with incredible potential."

Mourinho brought first brought Mohamed Salah to the Premier League when he signed the Egyptian at Chelsea in 2014.

It didn’t work for Salah at Chelsea before he was sold to Fiorentina from where he developed and later found himself back in England where he had a hit season with Liverpool. 

Mourinho has often times be accused of selling the forward but the former Chelsea manager denied it.  

“Lots of things have been told that is not true, people try to identify me with the coach that sold Salah, I am the coach bought Salah, so that's completely the wrong idea,” Mourinho said. 

“I played against Basel in the Champions League and Salah was a kid in Basel. When I play against a certain team, I analyze the players and the team for quite a long time and I fell in love with that kid.

“I bought the kid and I pushed the club to buy him and at that time we had already fantastic attacking players, it was (Eden) Hazard, Willian, we have top talent there but I told them to buy that kid. 

“He was just a lost kid in London. He was a lost kid in a new world and we wanted to work him to become better and better but he was more in the idea that he wanted to play and not to wait. 

“So we decided to put him on loan, on loan to a culture that I knew well, Italy. Tactical football, physical football, a good place to play, Fiorentina is a good team without being the team with huge pressure playing for the title. 

“When we decided the move there. When the club decided to sell him, it was not me. So I bought him, I didn't sell him.

“My relationship with him is good, I think he does not regret that move because everything went well for him and the progression went well for him. But at that moment he was just a kid with the huge desire to play every week, every minute and we couldn't give him that.”

Mourinho gave an interesting take on the difference between players of the older generation and the new one. 

“It's not that the old generation was perfect and the new generation is not perfect, it’s just the way it is,” Mourinho said. 

“When I was a kid if my father tells me ‘take one Euro and go and buy the newspaper’ and I go immediately and buy the newspaper and the only thing I ask him is ‘can I keep the change, but I go. If today I tell my son to go buy the newspaper, he asks why, and then I tell him I have something to do, but he says ‘you can go and buy the newspaper after five minutes’.

“Generations change. I don't think it's also fair to say that the (older generation) were good professionals, all of them were top and the new generation they are all bad boys with a difficult situation to manage.

“It's not true at all. You need to manage the situation, what I am saying is that you need much communication than before. 

“Before it was much more about what the manager decides and you accept because this is the hierarchy and this is the way it is. 

“Now you need much more communication and you need to share much more the power that was focused on one person. Instead of the manager to become the guy that tells you every time to buy the newspaper, it is the guy that also tells you ‘somebody is telling you to buy the newspaper every day but this time I go’. 

“You have to share the leadership, the leadership is not anymore possible to be unidirectional, You need a structure.  

“And when I was speaking before, I wasn't speaking with my experience with Manchester United, I'm speaking about generality, and I think this is the way. It's not about good boys or bad boys, it's about different moments in the history of not just football, but humanity, our kids are different from us.”

Mourinho also explained that he has made some bad choices about the clubs he has chosen to manage most of his career. 

“We depend much more on the players we have and much more on the choices we make. I think I'm very bad with choices,” Mourinho said. 

“Some of my friends they say, if it was an easy job it wouldn't be for you or I can say it is the difficult job that I'm given. 

“Some other guys are more clever than me in the choices. I go to Real Madrid when Real Madrid had played 10 years without getting to the semifinals of the Champions and without winning the league for six or seven years. 

“I go to Chelsea when Chelsea was in trouble, I got to Chelsea when Chelsea had not won the league in 50 years. 

“I go to Inter when Inter had not won the Champions League for 50 years. I go to Manchester United in a period when Sir Alex’s (Ferguson) legacy was over and everything was changing with other teams much more in front with their structures. I'm not very good on choices.” 

Mourinho talked about the influx of new managers who play exciting football but don’t win trophies. 

“It's very easy to play well and not win,” Mourinho said. 

“The people that win consistently because you can win isolated and disappear. 

“The people that win consistently have a different idea about that, If you speak about (Pep) Guardiola, about (Carlo) Ancelotti and the group where obviously I belong that have a career of victory for a long period but the young ones with an impact in terms of result, where are there?”

Mourinho led Manchester United to a second place finish in the 2017/2018 season, 19 points behind Manchester City who broke several records on their way to the title. 

He believes that feat was one of the best of his prolific career. 

“Sometimes we comment on what we see but we don't know what's behind the scene. I think that it is a fundamental thing,” Mourinho said. 

“If I tell you, for example, I consider one of the best jobs of my career to finish second with Manchester United in the Premier League you say this guy is crazy. 

“He owns 25 titles and he’s saying the second position was one of his best achievement in football. 

“I keep saying this because people do not know what’s behind the scene and sometimes we in this side of the camera we analyze things from a different perspective. 

“The reason I accept to be here and I will accept in the next period when I won’t be working is also to know the new football better and to do that you have to understand what is behind the cameras.”