Jose Mourinho's appointment as Chelsea manager will match the unlimited resources of the English premier league's richest club with a coach whose recent success has done nothing to dampen his ambition.
"If you tell me that in 10 years I'll only have the same collection of titles as I have now I won't be satisfied," Mourinho said a few moments after Porto's 3-0 victory over Monaco in the Champions League final last week.
"I've got to do more as a manager. I want to continue to be ambitious -- to become better and better."
| |||||||||||
Four years ago, he began his first spell as head coach at Benfica and as recently as 2002 he was slogging away at Uniao Leiria, a club virtually unknown outside Portugal and without a major honour to their name.
It is only in the last two-and-a-half years, since taking over at Porto, that Mourinho has truly emerged from Robson's shadow to make a name for himself.
In that time, the qualities Robson spotted have brought the 41-year-old two league titles, the UEFA Cup and the European Cup, as well as a multi-million-euro contract with the richest club in the premier league.
"I worked with Robson for four or five years and he's a big influence on my career but I think it's time to stop speaking about my past," Mourinho said shortly before Porto's 3-0 win over Monaco in the Champions League final.
"We can now start to speak about what I am and what I've achieved."
TEEN SCOUT
Mourinho has been involved in football since his teens, preparing reports on future opponents when his father, a former international goalkeeper, was coaching at Vitoria Setubal.
"He told me when he was 15 that he wanted to be a coach when he grew up," his father recalled. "When he was a kid he only wanted a football as a present."
Mourinho abandoned his career as a reserve team midfielder to study physical education at Lisbon's sporting university and at the age of 24 he completed a UEFA coaching course in Scotland.
He lost his job as a fitness trainer at Estrela Amadora when his coach, Manuel Fernandes, was sacked but salvation came when Fernandes recommended him to Robson as a translator at Sporting.
It was to be the start of a five-year apprenticeship for Mourinho, who moved on with Robson to Porto and Barcelona.
Along the way, Mourinho was promoted from translator to second assistant coach and later to a post as Robson's number two.
When Robson was moved upstairs at Barcelona to make way for Louis van Gaal in 1997, Mourinho stayed on to work with the Dutchman, helping to coach players such as Rivaldo and Luis Figo.
His first job as head coach at Benfica in 2002 was not an auspicious start, as he walked out after a row with the president early in the season.
BOOT-BOY RETURNS
After Benfica, he took a job at Uniao Leiria, where his father had held a coaching post in the late 1970s and the young Mourinho had cleaned boots for the first-team players.
He guided the side to third place in the league and accepted an offer to return to Porto in January 2002.
He took with him defender Nuno Valente and Brazilian striker Derlei Silva for virtually nothing and snapped up Maniche Ribeiro from Benfica's reserve team.
He also found room in his side for little-known Brazilian-born midfielder Deco Souza and Porto finished the season in third place.
The 2002-03 season brought the league title and Porto returned to the European spotlight thanks to their UEFA Cup final victory over Celtic. He went one better this season by masterminding the club's second European Cup win.
Mourinho's move to Chelsea presents him with all the resources necessary to show he can also succeed outside the comfortable confines of the Portuguese league. Whatever problems he encounters, self-doubt is unlikely to be an issue.
"I hope that in the next 10 years I'll have a story to tell and it won't be based on what I've done already," he said.
If Mourinho spends the next decade achieving even more than he has done at Porto, the story should make good reading.
More from rediff