By For a man who once voiced Pope Francis in a Vatican-sponsored film about the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima (yep), José Mourinho has never been one for conciliation. His latest barney is with Paul Pogba, who he has promised will never captain Manchester United ever again following the Frenchman's criticism of Mourinho's turgid tactics.
José, however, insists that despite stripping Pogba of vice-captaincy, there is "no fallout, no problem" with the midfielder. You see! It's fine! Absolutely no problem, Paul. Love your work, top guy. You're just never allowed to captain Manchester United ever again, mate. Alright. Great. Good talk. It's not Mourinho's first rodeo though. These are his biggest and best feuds.
2005: Jesualdo Ferreira
As a young manager being courted by Benfica, Mourinho rejected the imposition of the veteran Ferreira on him as assistant manager in a column for Portuguese magazine Record Dez. Mourinho mocked Ferreira's lack of success as a coach compared to his own glories, and called him "a donkey who worked for 30 years but never became a horse". The equine evolutionary tree doesn't work like a PwC grad scheme, but never mind.
2005: The great refereeing conspiracy
After accusing Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard of influencing refereeing decisions by marching in the referees' office at half time in their Champions League game, UEFA head of referees and part-time Bond villain Volker Roth called Mourinho an "enemy of football".
2005: Arsene Wenger's Rear Window
The first volley in the long-running war between Arsene Wenger and Mourinho came when Mourinho called the Arsenal manager "a voyeur" after what the Chelsea manager perceived as constant sniping against his team. "There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families," he said, casting Wenger as a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart leering in at potential murderers in west London.
2007: Sunday trading laws
Having a small squad, Mourinho once said, is "like having a blanket that is too small for the bed. You pull the blanket up to keep your chest warm and your feet stick out. I cannot buy a bigger blanket because the supermarket is closed. But the blanket is made of cashmere!"
Cashmere! José Mourinho can't just turn up at the 24-hour Asda and make do with a slanket. He returned to the theme later. "In the supermarket you have class one, two or class three eggs and some are more expensive than others and some give you better omelettes. So when the class one eggs are in Waitrose and you cannot go there" - such as at 5pm on a Sunday - "you have a problem."
2007: Melons
"Young players are like melons," Mourinho explained, sounding like a cross between Forrest Gump and Hannibal Lecter. "Only when you open and taste the melon are you 100 percent sure that the melon is good." Melons have clearly misled Mourinho at some point in the past. This might also explain why Chelsea started sending their thousands of young players out on loan: to stop Mourinho chasing them around Cobham with a hatchet, trying to hack them apart to feast on their bone marrow.
2007: Bird flu
"I'm feeling a lot of pressure with the problem in Scotland," Mourinho said during a title run-in with Manchester United which coincided with reports of the H5N1 bird flu virus. "It's not fun and I'm more scared of it than football." Mourinho's stockpiles of Tamiflu have, thankfully, remained untouched in his doomsday prepper bunker.
Since time immemorial: Pep Guardiola
If you wanted to, you could cast the La Masia-schooled twins Guardiola and Mourinho in their own Paradise Lost, with Pep as the one anointed to lead Barcelona and José the vengeful, spiteful fallen angel outcast. "When you enjoy what you do, you don't lose your hair, and Guardiola is bald," Mourinho once said. "He doesn't enjoy football."
2011: 'Pito' Vilanova
You'll probably recall the time Mourinho poked the late Barcelona coach Tito Vilanova in the eye during an almighty El Clasico brawl. You might not remember Mourinho calling him 'Pito' - the Spanish equivalent of 'knob' - and pulling a classic don't-even-know-who-you-are-pal on him: "Who is... Vilanova? I don't know who... Vilanova is."
2014: Wenger, again
Wenger went in for seconds several years after the original beef with José, suggesting that he was afraid of failure. Mourinho hit back, saying that after eight years without a league title Wenger had become a "specialist in failure". Low-hanging fruit.
2015: Eva Carneiro and the medical establishment
Mourinho criticised Chelsea's club doctor for her "impulsive and naive" rush onto the field to check if Eden Hazard was hurt late on in a game Chelsea were chasing against Swansea. Despite the General Medical Council backing Carneiro's actions, Mourinho wouldn't back down and Chelsea ended up in court over it.
2015: Rafa Benitez's wife
"Real Madrid are the third of Jose Mourinho's old teams Rafa has coached," Montserrat Searra Benitez harrumphed after watching her husband follow Mourinho at Inter and Chelsea. "We tidy up his messes."
Mourinho obviously wasn't having that. "The only club where her husband replaced me was at Inter Milan, where in six months he destroyed the best team in Europe at the time," he snapped. "For her also to think about me and to speak about me, I think she needs to occupy her time, and if she takes care of her husband's diet she will have less time to speak about me."
2016: Time as a linear concept
"For me, the real age is not the age on your ID. That’s just a date when you were born," Mourinho said after signing 34-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic for United. "The real age, the real ID, is your body, your brain, your attitude." Maybe one for 17-year-olds to try next time Wetherspoons staff start looking at their 'European driving permit' sceptically.
2016: The entirety of the Chelsea squad
As Stamford Bridge started to crumble around him toward the end of his second stint at Chelsea, Mourinho said he had been "betrayed" by his players. "One possibility is that I did an amazing job last season and brought the players to a level that is not their level and now they can’t maintain it."
2018: Antonio Conté
A feud as protracted as it was pointless, there were handshake snubs, end-of-game recriminations whispered in Italian, uninspired press conference jabs and a crushing sense of futility about the whole thing.
