Lately it’s been a frenzied season of manager sackings with the likes of Steve Bruce, Nuno Espirito Santo, Daniel Farke and Dean Smith shown the exit from their respective clubs, besides hot news swirling of questionable incumbents like Man United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer squirming under a shakedown that’s been long overdue.
Although it’s generally unpleasant business affecting clubs when managers are issued their marching papers for whatever reasons, apparently getting the sack ahead of the time specified on the dotted lines in the contract can actually prove quite profitable for some, with the caveat that the sacking happens repeatedly to the same individual at different clubs over the years.
Interestingly, some new facts have just revealed how much Jose Mourinho has accumulated over the years from being sacked by a string of football clubs, with the idiosyncratic Portugese manager having received generous compensation from the likes of Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham after getting fired before his contracts expired.
Mourinho has actually earned in excess of £100 million from his spell with just clubs in the Premier League itself, and new data from 101 Great Goals now reveals how much compensation he has received over the course of his managerial career.
The first stint of ‘The Special One’ in England was in 2004, arriving at Chelsea on the back of a stellar Champions League triumph with Porto. He promptly proceeded to win two Premier League titles at Stamford Bridge before being sacked in 2007 following a poor start to the season.
Unfazed, the serial titles-winning maverick manager continued on his stellar path and clinched domestic titles with Inter Milan and Real Madrid in the years following until 2013, when he and the oligarch owner of Chelsea kissed and made up and he accordingly returned to Stamford Bridge.
Unsurprisingly, the Portuguese maestro orchestrated all that was necessary to lift the Premier League trophy once again in 2015. However, a leopard can’t change its spots, like they say, and much like in his first stint, the creamy milk quickly turned rancid thereafter. The hero turned villain again was fired unceremoniously later in the year and Mourinho, never short of options or suitors, found himself at the Old Trafford by 2016, licking his chops and eager to replace Dutchman Louis van Gaal as United’s head coach.
Mourinho’s stint at the Theater of Dreams lasted two years, during which time he won the League Cup, Europa League and the Community Shield. However, murmurings of bad blood between the Portuguese manager and Frenchman Paul Pogba allegedly ended up with the club’s hierarchy choosing the latter and once again Mourinho’s party was busted, with him relieved of duties well ahead of the scheduled end of his contract.
So, care to hazard a guess as to how much The Special One made in just that stretch of time being laid off successively from those three English clubs? According to 101’s investigation, Mourinho has made £97,674,480 from his three jobs in the Premier League over just the past ten years. That’s quite a feat. Bravo!
That astronomical figure close to a cool £100million sees him perched very comfortably at the pinnacle of the pile in comparison to the amount earned by each Premier League manager who has been sacked since the beginning of the 2011/12 season. Former Spurs boss, Mauricio Pochettino, only manages a distant second on the list, more than £50m behind Mourinho. No prizes given for guessing who’s the shrewder among the two there.
Overall, the data shows that the three-time Premier League winner spent a total of 2,315 days managing in England, earning an average of £42,192 a day. In that time, he took charge of 336 games, winning 209, and bagging £266,870 per match.
Therefore, his earnings add up to £97,674,480 across his three jobs, which makes Mourinho the most expensive manager in the history of the Premier League – and by a huge margin too.