It's clear from the Mourinho documentary whom he has the least time for - and it's not Guardiola

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FT Desk

A new documentary has been released on Netflix about the career of legendary manager Jose Mourinho.

The show charts his remarkable career and life, exploring the extraordinary success that established him as one of football’s greatest coaches, alongside the controversies that have made him such a polarising figure.

It traces his journey from his breakthrough at Porto, where he famously led the club to Champions League glory in 2004, through highly successful spells with Chelsea and Inter Milan. It also looks at his time in charge of Real Madrid and Manchester United, before covering the later stages of his career with Roma and Fenerbahce.

A major feature of the documentary is its line-up of interviews with players and football figures who worked with Mourinho or faced his teams. Among those featured are Sir Alex Ferguson, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Samuel Eto’o, Javier Zanetti, Marco Materazzi, Luis Figo, Marcelo, Petr Cech and Eden Hazard.

The feud with Pep Guardiola is mentioned throughout as the Catalan is Mourinho's greatest ever rival. However, he does not appear personally.

According to ESPN, Guardiola was asked to appear in the documentary and agreed to do so, but only if personally requested by Mourinho himself.

Mourinho did not extend that invite.

There's undoubtedly an underlying respect between the pair despite their collisions over the last 20 years, but the same probably can't be said in the relationship between Mourinho and Iker Casillas.

From watching the documentary, it is clear that the person the Portuguese has the least time for is the former Real Madrid captain.

"The relationship Jose and I had was very cold," Casillas says in the documentary. "In those years, I really think it was taken to a limit where, in the end, the rope broke."

It seems Casillas immediately got off on the wrong foot with Mourinho, who revealed:

"The first three times that I spoke to Casillas, the captain, the first thing he told me was, 'I want to ask for more holidays for the national team players'.

"The second time he spoke to me was, 'I would like to ask you to put the training sessions one hour later because at the time you want the training sessions, there is a lot of traffic in Madrid'.

"The third time he comes to speak with me was, 'We don't want to go to [the] hotel. We prefer just to meet on matchday and go direct to the stadium to play'. And in a short period of time, I realised they're spoilt."

Mourinho was reportedly unhappy at Casillas' relationship with Barcelona players in the Spain squad, as the sets of players are supposed to be eternal rivals.

"There are things that I don't accept and I will never accept and when somebody doesn't respect me, it's a problem," he said.

"I say, this is Barcelona, Real Madrid. When you go to the national team, then you can kiss the guy, but not now. This is war."

Mourinho's treatment of Casillas, eventually benching the legendary goalkeeper, did not go down well with the rest of the Real Madrid squad and he eventually lost the support of key figures like Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos. From there, the writing was on the wall.

Ex-Real midfielder Sami Khedira explains: "The locker room was a nightmare, honestly. After that, the relationship between Jose and many, many players was broken - like Cristiano [Ronaldo] and the Spanish guys, Casillas, Sergio Ramos. And those players were super, super important for the atmosphere."

Remarkably, despite the dressing room hostility and his eventual dismissal by Florentino Perez, the Real Madrid President has brought Mourinho back for a second spell with the club in 2026, 13 years after he was sacked.

In his first stint with Los Blancos, he won the Super Cup, one Copa del Rey and one La Liga, crucially toppling Guardiola's iconic Barca side to emerge as Spanish champions in 2012.