Mourinho returns to Real Madrid to settle his Champions League debt

José Mourinho embraces his return to Real Madrid as a second chance to win the Champions League, the title that slipped away from him during his first spell on the bench. Between 2010 and 2013, the Portuguese coach reached three consecutive semi-finals without ever getting his hands on La Décima, which finally arrived one season after his departure. Now, with the club entering a new era, his goal is to steer the team back to the European throne and lift the 16th European Cup.

• Mourinho played three Champions League semi-finals in a row with Real Madrid between 2011 and 2013, losing all of them.
• Florentino Pérez has acknowledged that the Portuguese put the club on the path to the six European titles that followed.
• Before his arrival, Real Madrid had suffered six consecutive round-of-16 eliminations.
• Winning the 16th European Cup would make Mourinho the first manager to lift the trophy with three different clubs.
• He would also break the record for the longest gap between Champions League titles for the same coach.

The round-of-16 wall Mourinho tore down in 2010

When the Portuguese arrived at Real Madrid, the club's European outlook was grim. After falling in the quarter-finals in 2003-04, the Spanish side began a negative streak that kept it out of the major Champions League stages for six years. Round of 16 after round of 16: the barrier seemed impossible to break for a team that had lost all of its continental magic.

Mourinho arrived with the credit of his recent European triumph at Inter Milan, where he knocked out Pep Guardiola's Barcelona with Messi in the semi-finals before beating Bayern in the final. With that pedigree, the Portuguese restored Real Madrid to the European elite and immediately broke the curse that had haunted the club in the continent's top competition.

Three consecutive semi-finals with no reward for Real Madrid

The first tie against Guardiola's Barcelona

In his first season in charge, Mourinho reached the semi-finals unbeaten, with eight wins and a draw along the way. The draw produced a high-intensity clash against Barcelona. The tie ended with defeat at the Santiago Bernabéu and a draw at Camp Nou, leaving Madrid with no chance of fighting for the title.

Bayern and the penalty shoot-out that still hurts

The second attempt began with overwhelming dominance: six straight wins and an overall record of nine victories and a draw up to the semi-finals. Once again unbeaten in Europe, Madrid faced Bayern Munich. The tie was decided on penalties, where Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká and Sergio Ramos missed three of the four spot kicks. That shoot-out remains one of the most painful moments in the club's modern history.

Klopp's Dortmund, the last executioner

In the 2012-13 season, his final one during the first spell, Real Madrid reached the semi-finals for the third consecutive year. Jürgen Klopp's Borussia Dortmund stood in the way and once again denied Mourinho La Décima. That elimination closed a cycle of three missed opportunities and marked the coach's farewell with unfinished business.

How Mourinho shaped the Champions League titles that followed

Although he did not lift the trophy himself, the Portuguese coach's legacy in Europe was reflected in the years that followed. Florentino Pérez has pointed out on several occasions that, even without winning the Champions League, Mourinho placed Real Madrid on the path to the six continental titles that arrived later: three with Zinedine Zidane and three with Carlo Ancelotti. La Décima, in fact, was won in the season immediately after his departure.

Without winning it, Mou set Madrid on the road to every Champions League that would follow: six, three with Zidane and three with Ancelotti.

The records Mourinho chases with the 16th European Cup

A continental triumph in this new spell would multiply the glory of the Setúbal-born manager. Lifting the 16th European Cup with Real Madrid would allow him to enter a select group of coaches with three European Cups, currently made up of Bob Paisley, Zinedine Zidane, Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique.

Additionally, Mourinho would become the first manager in history to win Europe's top club competition with three different teams, after his titles with Porto in 2004 and Inter in 2010. The third record at stake involves the time gap: 17 years would have passed since his last continental triumph, surpassing the 15 years between Jupp Heynckes' Champions League win with Real Madrid in 1998 and his success with Bayern in 2013.

The context of the return: restoring European dominance

Real Madrid enters this new chapter after two seasons away from the continental title, a drought that contrasts with the golden age in which it dominated Europe with historic authority. The club has turned to the return of the Portuguese in a bid to restore that triumphant era as soon as possible and put the team back among the leading contenders in the Champions League.