Portuguese man of war turns to peace

Mourinho's oratory is almost as entertaining as his football team and yesterday he resembled Arjen Robben in full flight - impish, inventive and industrious. Such is his prodigious work-rate that even the slides he presented were his own, with the odd spelling mistake and mistranslation revealing his latenight labour. 'Imprevisibility', anyone?

Mourinho's success is based on almost obsessive organisation and first-class man management and he speaks about his players with a tenderness usually reserved for intimate exchanges between lovers. Referring to a large slide of him embracing Frank Lampard after the Carling Cup final, Mourinho could have been going through his wedding photos.

He said: "This looks like a hug but it's more than a hug, it's not a simple hug. It's a hug after a cup final, the first cup for these players, a hug with one of the best players in the world. This is a hug of 'We did it!' a hug that shows we trust each other.

"Without words he's saying to me thanks, I'm saying to him thanks. This is a hug that we repeat player after player because we are a family and when you induct enthusiasm and co-operation, results come faster and bigger."

Mourinho makes his players feel special and they respond with suitably impressive performances, while his insistence on the primacy of the football ensures that training sessions never become boring.

He said: "A great pianist doesn't run around the piano or do push-ups with the tips of his fingers. To be great, he plays the piano.

"He plays all his life and to be a great footballer it's not about running, doing push-ups or physical work. The best way to become a great player is to play football. Having said that, a good manager must know much more than football. He has to be a leader of men and a coherent leader. A good leader must make all his men feel big, not small.

"There's not much difference between being a director of a big company and a football manager. Being a manager is about human resources and there's no difference between managing Microsoft and John Terry."

Above all it is team-work that is the key to Mourinho's philosophy, with the 42-year-old even playing down his own contribution.

He said: "I read that players become better when they work with me, but it's not true. They are better because they work as a team and the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

"Success against all odds is the history of my life and the most important part of success is building a team. The club is above every individual. Joe Cole is a good example. He has learnt to play for the team rather than as an individual. The most important star is the team."

More than 200 Israeli and Palestinian children were given the chance to show Mourinho and Peres their growing understanding on Sunday, as part of a monthly Peace Tournament made up of mixed teams.

Mourinho then took to the field himself as part of an adult Peace Team playing against a group of Israeli businessmen, and it soon became clear why he became a PE teacher rather than a footballer.

Operating at left-back he succeeded only in demonstrating why

Chelsea considered asking

Ashley Cole to fill that problem position, winning more friends than tackles as the Peace Team went down to a 9-7 defeat. Not that he looked unduly worried as he considered what he had learned from his first trip to Israel. After making such a success of his second career, Mourinho is already considering a third, with a humanitarian project arousing his interest.

He said: "I want to work for 13 more years and then I'll retire. When I've finished with football I can see myself 100 per cent involved in human actions. I have always thought about problems in the Middle East and Africa, not just about football."

On the basis of this peace mission, he could easily end up at the United Nations.