The working-class fishing city, where the Sado River meets the Atlantic Ocean, has a population of 90,000, but its most famous son spends most of his days some 1,500 miles away, working in England as manager of Manchester United.
“Jose doesn’t act like the special one when he’s here,” says Miguel, a waiter, on the waterfront street renamed Avenida Jose Mourinho. “He’s the normal one. He has close friends and family here. He walks to the market here, and nobody bothers him. He’s the son of our town, and we’re very proud of him. He’s an intelligent man, and before you ask, yes, he’s still got it!”
Mourinho is proud to come “home” to the one place on the planet where everyone seems to adore the usually divisive football manager.
“We remember him being asked on television if he missed Lisbon,” says Antonio, a taxi driver. “He replied that he didn’t miss Lisbon because he wasn’t from there, but that he was from Setubal, and he missed it very much.”
Setubal has been home to the Mourinho family since Jose’s father joined the local team, Vitoria, in 1955. Originally from southern Portugal’s Algarve, Jose Sr. played for 13 years and stayed not only after retiring as a player but also after the family lost property in Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution.
Mourinho’s father twice managed Vitoria in the 1990s, and it is to Setubal that Mourinho returns between jobs. In 2000, for example, he drove his black Volvo cabriolet for 10 hours right across Iberia from Barcelona, having rejected the chance to be assistant coach at the Camp Nou because he wanted to become his own man. He did not have a job lined up, but he did have belief.
However, as he waited for offers from clubs who wanted him to be their No. 1, the phone did not ring, and Mourinho began the 2000-01 season out of football. Within a month, though, he was in charge of Benfica; 25 trophies, including league titles in four countries and Champions League titles with unfancied Porto and Inter Milan, have followed in the 18 years since.