Jose Mourinho's Liverpool complex masks a grudging respect for the club that spurned him

The Portuguese set his heart on joining Liverpool in 2004 but was snubbed by the club. After more than 10 years on, such a rejection continues to hold considerable influence over the manager

Saturday's clash with Liverpool means more to Jose Mourinho than he lets on (Getty)

Imagine if, just before you are about to turn the light out and go to bed, your partner or room-mate turns to you and says: “This is just going to be a regular night’s sleep. Just like any other night. Nothing particularly special or important about it. Goodnight.”

It would, one suspect, have quite the opposite effect.

And so when Jose Mourinho describes Liverpool v Manchester United as “just another game”, as he did this week, it would be wise to read between the lines. In the same way that this has never been just another fixture for fans of the two clubs involved, for Mourinho Liverpool have never just been any other opponent.

To discover why, you need to go deeper than the long-standing rivalry between the two clubs. You need to go deeper than the many turbulent encounters and moments Liverpool have shared with Mourinho’s sides over the years, from Luis Garcia’s ghost goal to Demba Ba. You need to go right back, in fact, to the start: 2004, a year of seismic upheaval for both.

For it is often forgotten that when Mourinho was still at Porto, plotting his next move into one of the big European leagues, Liverpool were his first choice. It was a logical choice, too. Manchester United and Arsenal, the two outstanding sides in the English game, both had long-term managers in place. Tottenham had already made an approach earlier in the season and been rebuffed. Newcastle, where his mentor Bobby Robson was in charge, was out of the question.

Of course, there was Chelsea, newly-flush with Roman Abramovich’s wealth. But at that stage the Russian billionaire had been in charge of the club for less than a year, and his true intentions were still shrouded in mystery. Liverpool, by contrast, offered name recognition, history, stability, romance, passionate fans, a long-term outlook and a clear, achievable objective: to bring the title back to Anfield for the first time since 1990.

“Liverpool are a team that interests everyone,” he admitted. “Chelsea does not interest me so much, because it is a new project with lots of money invested in it. It is a project which, if the club fail to win everything, then Abramovich could retire and take the money out of the club. It's an uncertain project.”

It could have all been so different for Mourinho (Getty)

With Liverpool, by contrast, the timing was ideal. The club were about to end another mediocre season empty-handed, and were beginning to tire of the well-meaning but increasingly exposed Gerard Houllier. There was a good young squad in place and money to spend. In Liverpool, Mourinho saw a sleeping giant that he could restore to greatness: a potential dynasty, just like the one Alex Ferguson had created at United.

And so in February 2004, Mourinho despatched his agent Jorge Baidek to Melwood under the cover of transfer business, but in reality to sound them out about the manager’s job. At that stage, however, no decision had been made on Houllier’s future, and so Liverpool chief executive Rick Parry could offer no guarantees.

That same evening, Mourinho’s Porto knocked United out of the Champions League, Mourinho famously hurtling down the touchline to celebrate. Watching, unimpressed, was Parry, who began to wonder whether this was really the sort of figurehead they wanted. “One of our core values was respect,” he later remembered in Simon Hughes’s book Ring of Fire. “Seeing Mourinho celebrate like that reinforced my initial belief… was he really a Liverpool manager? Did he characterise the club’s values?”

Mourinho reached out to Liverpool during the end of his spell at Porto (Getty)

Weeks passed. As the season wound to a close, Houllier was indeed sacked, and for a while Liverpool mulled over Mourinho as a potential candidate. By that point, however, Chelsea had already made their move. Abramovich and Peter Kenyon had been courting Mourinho since the spring, and with no offer from Liverpool forthcoming, Mourinho had decided to take the plunge. Liverpool appointed Rafa Benitez instead, and so sowed the seeds for a primal and personal rivalry.

“When Benitez was appointed at Liverpool, it was between him and Mourinho,” Liverpool midfielder Danny Murphy admitted last year. “I know that for a fact. Mourinho wanted the Liverpool job massively. But Liverpool basically went with Benitez, because they thought it was more solid an appointment than someone who had only done it in Portugal. I know Mourinho was massively disappointed.”

In a way, Liverpool’s rebuff of Mourinho in 2004 became a defining moment in the story of both. Over time, Steven Gerrard would become one of a number of players who was convinced that Mourinho would have been an ideal Liverpool manager. “It would have been a perfect match,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The Liverpool fans would have loved him, and he would have known exactly how to turn that love into adoration. He would have loved managing at Anfield, too.”

Equally, the experience determined the sort of manager Mourinho would become. He was still only 40, after all, with plenty of learning to do. Clutched to the Anfield bosom, it is possible that he would have become a humbler, less overtly confrontational manager than he would become at Chelsea. Instead, spurned by his first choice and with the self-assurance that comes with joining a club who were desperate for your signature, he threw himself headlong into the turbulent, personality-driven world of billionaire-ball, with its vast budgets, three-year contracts, spectacular successes and spectacular defenestrations. Over the years, Mourinho has learned to play this game better than anybody else. But perhaps it was never meant to be that way. Perhaps, all along, he genuinely wanted to build something.

It would not take long for Mourinho to light the blue touchpaper. Chelsea and Liverpool met in the League Cup final in 2005, and when Steven Gerrard’s late own goal took the game into extra time, Mourinho strolled down the Cardiff touchline, shushing the Liverpool fans. The bad blood was renewed a few months later in the Champions League semi-final, when Mourinho’s Chelsea were eliminated by Luis Garcia’s “ghost goal”, which still vexes him to this day.

Mourinho memorably shushed the Liverpool fans during the 2005 League Cup final (Getty)

Two years later, before another Champions League semi-final, Mourinho taunted Benitez’s record at Liverpool, accusing him of turning them into a “cup team” and suggesting that he would have been sacked if he had performed like Benitez. This time, Liverpool took the bait. “I don’t care what he says, I don’t listen,” Parry said. “I guess when you’ve invested £500m, it’s a fantastic season to win the League Cup.”

And so a pattern had been set. Mourinho spent the next six years abroad, but when he finally returned to Chelsea for the 2013-14 season, his fate and Liverpool’s seemed destined to be entwined. As the season drew to a close, Liverpool needed to beat Chelsea to keep their title hopes on track. Mourinho smelt a plot. “I felt that day was a day that was ready for their celebration,” he said. “They want us to be the clowns in the circus. The circus is here.”

Everyone knows what happened next. Gerrard slipped; Ba scored; Willian, a player Mourinho had beaten Liverpool to the previous summer, added a second in stoppage time; Mourinho, unshaven, unkempt and in a shabby white tracksuit instead of his trademark suit, marched down the touchline, bellowing. Clearly this was not just another win for him either.

Is Mourinho's regard for Liverpool still there, beneath the surface? (Getty)

It is tempting to summarise the simmering feud between Mourinho and Liverpool in ideological terms. There are similarities here with Mourinho’s treatment of Barcelona over the years, another club he might once have managed, only to be turned down. Like Liverpool, Barcelona is a club with a very distinct identity, ideology, perhaps even a certain romance. As a manager, Mourinho is distrustful of dogma, wary of the idea of sport as a moral battlefield. Above all, he is pragmatic rather than idealistic. You might almost say that Liverpool and Barcelona stand for something, while Mourinho stands for nothing.

Yet as ever, it is probably a little more complicated than that. Scratch beneath the surface and the same admiration and regard that Mourinho showed for Liverpool all those years ago is still, occasionally, evident. Mourinho’s repeated overtures to Gerrard while at Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid felt menacingly vexatious at the time. But perhaps, in retrospect, they were an attempt to procure a little of the Liverpool spirit, the Liverpool essence, for his own sides.

“There has been a history, a great rivalry between the clubs, but beneath it all he knows the power of Liverpool,” said Brendan Rodgers, a former protege of Mourinho’s, before one encounter. “He told me to take the job, and what a great club Liverpool was. And I know even if we are considered a rival, that if they didn’t win the league, he would want Liverpool to win it.”

Mourinho returns to Anfield this weekend (Getty)

All of which raises an intriguing question. Doth Mourinho protest a little too much? Is there a faint whiff of yearning there, the sort that normally accompanies unconsummated desire? For all his palmares, does he still occasionally wonder what might have been? And 13 years after their first courtship, and in charge of their deadly rivals, is it possible that Mourinho still admires Liverpool a lot more than he lets on?

Liverpool, too, would probably and grudgingly admit to a certain regard. While Mourinho has filled his trophy cabinet all around Europe, Liverpool remain a club in fourth gear, still unable to take the top step. The project they snatched away from Houllier and gave to Benitez all those years ago still, unbelievably, remains incomplete. Should Jurgen Klopp fail too, the clamour for a Mourinho-style proven winner to take the reins would be overwhelming.

And so, even as Mourinho steps out at Anfield on Saturday lunchtime, taking his seat in the dugout with boos and whistles ringing in his ears, it is possible to see, in these two tarnished giants, a certain kinship of spirit. Perhaps, ultimately, Liverpool and Mourinho always had more in common than people realised.