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Real Madrid: Mourinho gone at season’s end

May 21, 2013 - 19:45 By Korea Herald
MADRID (AP) ― Jose Mourinho will leave Real Madrid after three years as coach, paving the path for his return to England and a second stint as Chelsea’s manager.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez announced at a news conference following a board meeting Monday that a mutual agreement was reached for Mourinho’s departure.

The 50-year-old Portuguese coach has two matches remaining in a season that will end on June 1 without Madrid winning a major trophy.

Mourinho will leave having won only two major titles, the 2011 Copa del Rey and the 2012 league championship, and he failed to deliver the club’s much-desired 10th European Cup. He was ejected from Friday’s 2-1 loss to Atletico Madrid in the Copa del Rey final.

“This has been an insufficient season for us and also for Mourinho himself,” Perez said.

Mourinho’s locker room appeared to splinter this season as he benched goalkeeper Iker Casillas, the captain of Madrid and Spain’s world and European championship teams.

“To spend three years in a first-division Spanish club is not easy ― I share his reasons for wanting to leave,” Perez said. “The level of pressure has increased, so much that this is what has happened now. ... He may have made some mistakes and asked for forgiveness, but the level of pressure Mourinho has been under has been unusual.”

After becoming the third coach to win the European Cup with two teams (Porto in 2004 and Inter Milan in 2010), Mourinho replaced Manuel Pellegrini at Real for the 2010-11 season.

“With Mourinho, we made a big leap competitively and sporting-wise,” Perez said. “Today Madrid is where it ought to be. We had not reached that level prior to his arrival, so the balance of his stay here was positive.”

The agreement indicates the colorful and outspoken coach can return to Chelsea after a six-year absence without any compensation from the London club to Madrid. It was at Chelsea where Mourinho became the self-dubbed “Special One.”

“I know in England I am loved,” he told a news conference last month after Real was eliminated from the Champions League.