The whump of pitchside flames, the tinny theatre of the Uefa anthem, a craning of necks, a rising crackle of energy. And finally there he was out on the Stamford Bridge touchline, like some fond, long-lost figure emerging from the steam, suitcase in hand, while Jenny Agutter says Daddy, my daddy and rushes in for a hug.
Except of course, this daddy is just as likely to jab her in the eye, before knee-sliding provocatively down the platform and making a series of borderline defamatory remarks in a press conference.
José Mourinho has been back to Chelsea many times. Why should this one matter more? Perhaps because he might not be back again. Perhaps because there is also very little else riding on these early Champions League mega-table games, a workaday 1-0 Chelsea victory here just another autumn footnote.
Either way the whole occasion carried a little more pathos this time. Before kick-off on the Fulham Road the José scarves hung like ripe fruit, overseen by at least one very stern José cardboard cutout. Earlier in the week Chelsea fans could be heard across various platforms talking in husky tones about the return of the king, the paterfamilias, the architect of a pop-up mega-club.
In the event Mourinho was performatively coy at the start, emerging last from the tunnel, siting primly in his pitchside seat. No. Don’t mind me. But he was up straight away as the game kicked off, looking slick and trim in a classic Crombie-length overcoat and open-neck tailored shirt, like a tech billionaire on his way to a court hearing.
The crowd chanted his name, as they did all night off and on, and were met instantly with a faux-humble wave. And this was basically a chance to watch an old bloke having a really good time out there. Mourinho isn’t really a coach these days. He’s a portable human fame event, a real-time José Mourinho happening. Asked once why he didn’t seek fame on the literary circuit Philip Larkin replied that he didn’t want to “go around pretending to be myself”. José, well, José is the exact opposite of this.
At one point in the first half Enzo Fernández went to take a corner and was pelted with cups by the Benfica fans. It made for an ideal Mourinho moment. There he was parading down the touchline, both hands above his head in a papal gesture, the peacemaker. Maybe José and not Tony Blair should be out there defusing the ancient hatreds of Gaza. It would at least be box office.
If there was something slightly double-take about all this, like a dream where your long-dead uncle is suddenly serving drinks and cracking jokes at his own wake, it also felt oddly tender. The game changes. José doesn’t change.
Although the thing that hasn’t changed in the past two weeks is that Benfica are not a great team. They went 1-0 down thanks to Richard Ríos’s own goal, and stayed 1-0 down to the end, but still had enough in the second half to threaten the Chelsea goal. Mourinho will like the spirit and the physicality. This club was also his first job 25 years ago. But he will struggle to create any real Porto-style alchemy here. Football is too stratified now. You can’t make that leap up.
Is Mourinho still an elite coach? Almost certainly not. In an odd twist the tactical weather vane seems to have swung back his way. Power. Set pieces. Headers. These are all hot right now.
But it is also a pointless question at this stage, and a common mistake to assume he has no wider legacy, no sphere of inflection over modern football. Pep Guardiola retains his tactical influence. But Mourinho perfected the other half of the modern game, the weaponising of stage management and personality.
His return here was not a hangover from some other world. It was bang up to date, a piece of pure theatre, entertainment product, a Mourinho Tuesday night Vegas special. Mourinho made those things into vital elements, the original influencer, the first clips man, the first viral figure. Football as moments, personality, show. This is just as big in the modern game as passing the ball back to the goalkeeper.
It is also easy to overlook that Mourinho has a second life as an avatar of internet football authenticity. Young people get him. He has that vital quality, aura.
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From early José, so absurdly handsome he would probably need to be pixelated now or accompanied by a content warning, to the late, chic, cartel boss overlord look. All of this lives on in memes, clips, web heritage, the current mode as final-boss dropper of truth bombs.
It isn’t hard to see why his enduring fascination might be bound up with a nostalgia for a more vivid, less orderly footballing landscape. The José years look pretty wild now. Mourinho once threw a dog over a wall because the police were at the front door. Has Thomas Hurzeler ever done this? Is it possible to imagine Arne Slot doing it?
There was of course nothing pure about those times. Mourinho still speaks to the macro-oddity of the Chelsea project, installed by a Kremlin-connected oligarch, with a founding era built on the total absence of financial controls. London was becoming London-grad. History had ended, Vladimir Putin was a taciturn man in a suit, Roman Abramovich a handsome playboy with a yacht.
In many ways what happened with Mourinho and Chelsea happened to all of us, a small sporting chapter of an unfolding fable of power and shifting tectonic plates. Of course seeing him here in west London again carries not just a theatrical power, but a sense of time passing.
At the end he looked a little drained as he spoke about legacy and the past in reflective tones.
But there was a further irony watching this current Chelsea team struggle a little under the intricate promptings of Enzo Maresca. Here is a visiting manager who has everything Chelsea’s owners want: star power, eyeball-magnetism. But also everything they could never actually work with: egotism, charisma, insurrectionary qualities.
Say what you like about Mourinho’s gracelessness, his bending of the rules. He is also obsessed with the game, and with glory. Who would you rather watch, the dark lord in all his curdled power, or a man with an iPad, a squad acquired like a stock portfolio, the US vision of football as mobile leisure product?
