Jose Mourinho hopes to manage at the highest level for many more years - but admits he will sorely miss the match-day routine when he does call time on his stunning career.
The 59-year-old has been coaching for three decades and previously hinted he would leave the dugout when he turns "60 or 65". However, there are over two years remaining on the contract he signed with Roma in May 2021 and the Italian club are in a fine vein of form with four wins in their last five Serie A games.
Mourinho was in a reflective mood during a recent Vatican meeting with Jose Tolentino de Mendonca, a Roman Catholic cardinal, and freely discussed his motivations and aspirations. The Portuguese also dropped a clear hint over his future as he declared he hopes the day he is no longer managing "will not be soon".
"On the way to a match, I mean leaving the hotel, getting off the bus, arriving at the stadium, the walk to the dressing room, the walk from the dressing room to the pitch before the start of the match, there is a lot of spirituality in all of this," Mourinho told L'Osservatore Romano , per Football Italia.
"It is never a routine, no matter how many times you play in the same stadium, and you always do the same route, it is a moment that has something that you can't see, but that you can feel a lot. I think it is of an enormous beauty and I think that the day I stop coaching, which I hope will not be soon, will be perhaps the thing that I will miss the most.
"To feel this dimension that takes me in directions that I have never shared with anyone, and that today perhaps I share for the first time. Walking towards the game and talking to Him [God]."
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Although many fans suspect Mourinho is no longer the elite force he was during his spells at Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, he is now a veteran who has forged his own styles of man management and leadership. "One of the greatest challenges that we as coaches, leaders of men, let's call them what we want, we have today is precisely that of how to be a leader, how to get the most," he added, per La Gazzetta dello Sport.
"Because, okay, the goal is high sporting performance, but how to get the most out of those athletes, who are not athletes but men. Each person is different from the other, in this case each player is different from the other.
"And the expression of each of them on the pitch in terms of performance is basically the consequence of an empathy that is created between two men. In this case, between a much more mature man and the players. This type of empathy is fundamental for me."
