José Mourinho says he doesn't look back. In August, at his debut news conference as returning Real Madrid coach after 13 years away from LaLiga, he was asked if he'd missed the Bernabéu.
"I'm not one for regrets," he said. "I'm not one for [thinking about] bad decisions, missing things ... I'm here today, there tomorrow. I don't think much about what I've left behind."
In El Clásico, club football's most storied rivalry, Mourinho left plenty behind. In three tumultuous seasons in charge of Madrid between 2010 and 2013, he faced Barcelona 17 times in LaLiga, the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Supercopa and the UEFA Champions League.
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For the first two years, his adversary in the Camp Nou dugout was Pep Guardiola; in the third, it was Guardiola's former assistant, Tito Vilanova. By the end, Mourinho's Clásico record read: five wins, six draws, and six defeats.
In that time, both teams delivered unprecedented 100-point seasons, their duelling stars pushing each other to new heights. In 2011-12, Lionel Messi scored a record 50 goals in LaLiga. It wasn't enough to beat Mourinho's Madrid to the title. But numbers alone cannot adequately describe that feverish period.
This was, in many ways, peak Clásico. Pep vs. José. Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo. It wasn't always pretty; it was sometimes downright nasty. But it was always riveting. And there, at the centre of it all, revelling in the spotlight, was Mourinho, orchestrating the chaos.
"In this [press] room, he's the f---ing boss, he's the f---ing man," an exasperated Guardiola vented in April 2011. "He's the smartest guy in the world."
Guardiola is long gone, but Mourinho is back, chosen by president Florentino Pérez as the coach to get Madrid on track after two trophyless seasons, and to tame a dressing room which proved too temperamental for predecessors Xabi Alonso and Álvaro Arbeloa to handle. On Sunday, in his first Clásico in 13-and-a-half years, Mourinho has the chance to prove that despite a long absence, he was always the right man for the job.
The panorama he finds now, in 2026, isn't radically different from when Mourinho first took charge at the Bernabéu in May 2010, having just won the Champions League with Inter Milan. Then, as now, Madrid had gone two seasons without any silverware. Then, as now, Mourinho was tasked with besting a Barcelona side which was already well established, supremely confident, and expertly coached.
Guardiola had already been Barça coach for two seasons. In his first, 2009-10, he had won a historic Treble. When Mourinho arrived in the summer of 2010, Guardiola was on the way to lifting a record six trophies in the calendar year.
Mourinho was Madrid's antidote, the only coach with the charisma, experience and know-how to turn the tide. His start to 2010-11 was exceptional. His team went 12 league games unbeaten. But matchday 13, his first Clásico, on Nov. 29, 2010, was a chastening experience.
Guardiola's Barça produced the defining performance of his time in charge, and the result was the most one-sided Clásico of the modern era. Barcelona won 5-0 at Camp Nou; Messi, Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta and Sergio Busquets taught Madrid a footballing lesson; David Villa scored twice.
It was the largest margin of victory in a Clásico since 1995. Mourinho himself called it "historically bad." It's a debut he will be desperate to avoid repeating on Sunday.
If that game felt seismic, it was only a prelude to what followed later that season, as Mourinho and Guardiola's teams met a gruelling four times in 18 days.
"Honestly, it was really strange," former Madrid defender Marcelo later told ESPN. "I don't think it was good for football."
Honours were shared in the series, but the biggest prizes went Barcelona's way. A 1-1 draw at the Bernabéu on April 16, 2011 -- with penalties converted by Messi and Ronaldo -- saw Barça near-clinch the league title for the third season in a row.
Mourinho, seeking to prevent another 5-0, had signalled his intentions by picking a destructive Pepê over Mesut Özil's midfield invention. His side had to dig deep after defender Raúl Albiol was sent off early in the second half. They emerged with some credit, but without a win.
Four days later, in the Copa del Rey final at Mestalla, they did even better. Ronaldo's 103rd-minute header from Ángel Di María's cross gave Mourinho his first trophy as Real Madrid coach.
He had shown Barça weren't invincible, after all, but the greatest challenge was still to come, in a Champions League semifinal. Before Mourinho, Madrid had been eliminated in the round of 16 for six consecutive seasons, an embarrassing record for the then nine-time European Cup winners.
Mourinho had broken through that ceiling; but they would go no further than the semis, as Barça went through 3-1 on aggregate.
A bad-tempered first leg at the Bernabéu on April 27 included a red card for Barça's substitute keeper Pinto after a half-time tunnel scuffle, and another, more consequential dismissal for Pepê, who had again been stationed in midfield. Two late goals from Messi decided the game.
Mourinho was absent for the second leg, a week later, suspended for his reaction to what had happened at the Bernabéu. "Against Barcelona you have no chance," he'd said, in a familiar conspiratorial tone. "I don't know if it's the Unicef [shirt] sponsorship ... I don't know if it's because they're very nice. But they've got this power." He eventually received a five-match ban from UEFA.
If that four-game run was the emotional, dramatic peak of Mourinho's time in Spain, his reputational rock bottom came four months later.
In August 2011, Barcelona won the then two-legged Spanish Supercopa 5-4 on aggregate. But that wasn't the story. During the second leg, amid a touchline brawl at Camp Nou, Mourinho, smirking, was caught on camera taking advantage of the mass of limbs to poke Vilanova in the eye. He later apologised.
What Mourinho was doing, stoking the intensity of a now toxic rivalry to new, histrionic levels, was working, and it was working in his favour. In 2011-12, his Madrid achieved what had appeared unthinkable: beating Guardiola's Barcelona to the league title.
A 2-1 win at Camp Nou on April 21, 2012 -- with Ronaldo scoring the winner and celebrating with his 'calma, calma' gesture that would become iconic -- made the title a near certainty. Madrid went seven points clear, with four games left. It was only Mourinho's second victory in a Clásico, and it meant Madrid's first league title in four years.
At the end of that season, Guardiola departed. "I left Barcelona because I was worn out," he later told journalist Martí Perarnau in the book "Pep Confidential." "I was on my knees."
A central part of that exhaustion -- at least according to those who played for him -- was the incessant battle with Mourinho.
"For Guardiola, at some point it was too much," Gerard Pique told Gary Neville, speaking on The Overlap. "It was more important sometimes what happened off the pitch than what happened on the pitch."
In Mourinho's last season in Madrid, with Vilanova -- who passed away a year later -- now in the Barcelona dugout, the title went Barça's way. They responded to Madrid's 100-point season in 2011-12 with one of their own, winning 32 of 38 league games. Madrid were less consistent, posting 26 wins, seven draws and five defeats.
But in head-to-head meetings, Mourinho had figured out how to neutralise Barça. In his last five Clásicos -- including both LaLiga games in 2012-13, and both legs of a Copa del Rey semifinal -- Mourinho didn't lose once.
His last Clásico was on March 2, 2013. Karim Benzema and Sergio Ramos scored, in a 2-1 win at the Bernabéu. But it felt a little hollow. Barcelona would end the season 15 points clear.
By May, Madrid were announcing that Mourinho would be leaving, despite having a contract until 2016. Pérez called it "a mutual agreement."
"Nobody has been fired," Pérez said. "We've decided to bring our relationship to an end."
In his absence, Pérez never forgot Mourinho. "I used to get phone calls after each trophy [Madrid won]," Mourinho revealed in August. "And I always said 'no, it's nothing to do with me.' I'm glad the work I did left positive things, but the trophies were for those who came after."
And now, he's back.
Instead of beating Pep's Barça, he must now best Hansi Flick, who has won six out of seven Clásicos in two years, with a goal balance of 22-11.
Flick's team are unbeaten in LaLiga, and scoring goals for fun. Mourinho's Madrid aren't yet the finished article.
It can't, and won't, match the frenzied rivalry of 13 years ago. But that might be no bad thing.
