Netflix tells the Mourinho story in three parts from 11 August (and Ferguson, Drogba and Casillas all sat down for it)
Filmed over two years with access to Mourinho himself, the series lands worldwide on the same day. Rui Faria, Luís Figo and Ricardo Carvalho are among the Portuguese voices.
It is called MOURINHO, it runs to three episodes, and it arrives on Netflix on 11 August everywhere at once. Two years of filming went into it, with access to the man himself, which already sets it apart from the rushed authorised biography.
The clock it runs on is easy to read. Twenty years have passed since the night FC Porto won the Champions League and pushed a manager almost nobody outside Portugal could name into the middle of European football. League titles in four countries followed, a second Champions League, and more recently a return to Real Madrid — a move that also reshuffled the bench at Benfica.
The people who agreed to talk
The interview list is where the ambition shows. Alex Ferguson, Didier Drogba, Iker Casillas, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Frank Lampard, John Terry, Samuel Eto’o, Marcelo, Javier Zanetti, Petr Čech, Marco Materazzi and Massimo Moratti all appear. From the Portuguese side there are Luís Figo, Ricardo Carvalho, André Villas-Boas and Rui Faria, the assistant who shadowed him for most of his career.
That is a cast containing both the people who adored him and the people who fell out with him. Usually a good sign.
Who made it
VENTURELAND produced it. John Battsek, who made BECKHAM, produces alongside Miles Coleman. Joe Pearlman directs, and his previous subjects were Robbie Williams and Lewis Capaldi — a music CV rather than a sports one, which may be the whole idea. A director used to pop stars knows what to do with a man who has spent two decades managing his own image.
Netflix is selling the series as a portrait of a contradiction: the winner the game cannot do without and cannot always live with. The official series listing confirms the three episodes, the date and the interviewees.
For anyone who watched that Porto side in 2004, this will feel less like a documentary and more like a family album.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Netflix
