Mourinho will lead Benfica to play against his old club Chelsea this week. Former Chelsea CEO Peter Kenyon was interviewed by the Daily Telegraph and talked about Mourinho's first coaching experience at Chelsea.

Kenyan officially became Chelsea CEO in August 2004. He participated in the interview with Mourinho. The deal almost failed: "The deal almost failed because he was late.

"I, Roman, Eugene (formerly Chelsea director) were in a bad restaurant on the Portuguese border, and I only remember that the restaurant was closed due to the event. We had six or seven people, three or four people over Mourinho, plus me, Roman, Eugene, we prepared meals for about 200 people, and it was like a bad wedding.

"Jose had a contract with Porto at the time. We were told he was on the way, so the atmosphere was very tense. We waited for about two hours, which was unheard of in Roman. We were all getting more and more annoyed over time. I thought to myself, ‘Is this kid serious?’

"His agent has been making excuses for him to be late. Things would have been much simpler if they had confessed the reason for being late at the beginning, but I don't want to dig deeper. This did not stop his appointment, but it was indeed doubtful at the time, ‘Can this happen? ’”

Chelsea had reduced the candidate list to three when looking for Ranieri's successor, including another coach Ancelotti, who eventually coached the club. But Mourinho took the job after he let Abramovich wait for a long time.

Kenyon added: "Anyway, he finally showed up and used those details to describe what he would do if he joined us, stealing the limelight.

"He repeatedly called Chelsea by 'we'. I noticed this, he talked about Chelsea players as if they were his players, and he also used 'we' when talking about clubs and teams. He was picking the roster he brought to the court on Saturday.

"We were sure we could choose one of the three candidates, one of which was Carlo. But Jose's performance was very different from what we expected, and from everyone else I've come into contact with. He is exactly what we need.

"After that meeting, everything was settled quickly. We immediately decided 'Yes, we want to sign him', and then we only discussed the salary and contract years. The whole process took only a few days, up to a week."