“I sell. That’s as simple as that,” says José Mourinho, the legendary soccer coach, in an eponymous new documentary on Netflix. He could be talking about the American Express advertisement the interview highlights, or any of the plethora of brands he has lent his face to, from Coca Cola to Kalshi.

But what Mourinho means is that he is the ultimate draw. Mourinho sells like sex sells. The message is that the brands he endorses are all the richer for their association with him—as are the soccer teams, superstar players, and fans who have been fortunate enough to be graced by his aura.

“I sell. That’s as simple as that,” says José Mourinho, the legendary soccer coach, in an eponymous new documentary on Netflix. He could be talking about the American Express advertisement the interview highlights, or any of the plethora of brands he has lent his face to, from Coca Cola to Kalshi.

But what Mourinho means is that he is the ultimate draw. Mourinho sells like sex sells. The message is that the brands he endorses are all the richer for their association with him—as are the soccer teams, superstar players, and fans who have been fortunate enough to be graced by his aura.

That aura and persona is something Mourinho has spent his entire life crafting. And it is predicated on two fundamental obsessions: football (as soccer is called in most of the world) and winning. Mourinho has won every major trophy in European soccer across the sport’s biggest leagues, with its biggest teams, multiple times over.

“Football is to win. And … I won a lot,” he says matter-of-factly, one of several quintessential Mourinho quotes peppered throughout the three-part series. “You don’t do a documentary with a guy that wins nothing.”

While I am an obsessive football fan myself, that’s not the reason I wanted to write about the self-anointed “Special One” (more on that below) for Foreign Policy. Rather, it’s what his life, career, and relentless self-aggrandizement can tell us about geopolitics and the world we live in today.

As the documentary lays out, Mourinho expects and inspires unflinching loyalty and will ruthlessly cast aside anyone who fails to give it to him. He has a need for ultimate control, a litany of grievances against his perceived enemies, and a deep conviction that no one can be bigger than him. If you stand against him, either you leave, or he does. It’s Mourinho versus the world. You just have to decide which side you want to be on. Sound familiar?

Mourinho during a press conference at the Chelsea training ground on Feb. 25, 2005.Getty Images

“He didn’t even have to say anything to make you aware that you could get on the wrong side of him,” says England football legend Frank Lampard, who played for Mourinho in the mid-2000s and is one of several superstars interviewed in the documentary. “You’re either with him or against him.”

Mourinho, in other words, is football’s ultimate authoritarian. As a viral social media post once put it, he was “born to be a dictator” but “forced to be a football coach.” He serves as a potent symbol for the world we seem to be living in—one where might makes right, winning is everything, and empathy is scoffed at rather than emulated.

One can debate whether that is the right approach to leadership, but Mourinho’s ever-growing mythology and continued success—despite openly embracing the role of villain—is something most politicians would kill for.

How much of it is an act and how much of it is really Mourinho? In the documentary, he reveals just enough for viewers to wonder but not enough to answer the question.

“People think they know me, but they don’t know me. And I’m happy they don’t,” he says. “It’s a privilege for the ones that know me.”

A photo of a young Mourinho from the documentary.Netflix

Mourinho grew up in the 1960s and ’70s in Setúbal, Portugal, where his mother was a teacher and his father played and then coached football professionally at the local club. Mourinho followed that career path but says he was “not a very good player,” quitting in the late 1980s before embarking on a coaching career that took him across Portugal and Spain’s top leagues as a translator and assistant coach.

But the documentary focuses on a series of big breakout moments that began in 2002—months after he took charge of top-tier Portuguese club FC Porto—when he boldly pledged that he would win them........

© Foreign Policy