Cat and mouse game with coach Jose Mourinho

Jose Mourinho, the enigmatic manager of Spanish football giants Real Madrid, is in town.

Mourinho, who signed Kenya’s McDonald Mariga at reigning European champions Inter Milan, has been on holiday with his family for nearly two weeks.

He arrived in Kenya aboard a private charter plane for a well deserved rest after guiding Italy’s Inter Milan to the European Champions League title last season by beating Bayern Munich 2-0.

Special One

On Sunday, the self-proclaimed “Special One” was spotted at Ukunda airstrip in the South Coast on his return from visiting Maasai Mara National Park.

It was a cat-and-mouse game as Nation journalists tried in vain to speak with Mourinho, who was driven to a South Coast beach resort in a convoy of three heavily guarded vehicles.

Mourinho could be seen on the back seat of a lightly tinted vehicle which also carried a woman and two children, a boy and a girl.

Clad in a Real Madrid T-shirt and dark glasses, Mourinho, 47, avoided all attempts to be photographed or interviewed.

One of his body guards alighted from an escort car and joined hotel guards to guide the coach’s vehicle into the hotel.

An irritated senior official of the hotel ordered security guards to keep reporters away and called the G4S private security firm to bolster security.

The official said: “You journalists are trying to kill my business. My visitor doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

Nevertheless, he had an opportunity to mingle with Ukunda residents when he went shopping at a local supermarket.

A taxi driver, Sammy Mwendwa, recalled the golden opportunity he had to chat with Mourinho and ask him about Macdonald Mariga’s performance.

“He told me that Mariga is a talented player who has a bright future and that there are many like him in Kenya who, unfortunately, fail to be noticed by European clubs,” said Mwendwa.

The Ukunda Jewellery Shop marketing manager, Silvana Lelesiit, said she sold a Sh8,000 bracelet to a woman companion.

She added that when the Real Madrid coach realised that there was a CCTV camera in the jewellery shop, he sat down on a chair and turned his back to it to avoid being captured on tape.

“I felt nervous to see a man dressed in shorts and sports shoes avoiding this CCTV camera but when I looked closely, he seemed familiar. As a soccer fan, I quickly recognised him to be Mourinho and immediately had a chat with him. He only said ‘I feel at home’ and left after paying for the bracelet,” Lelesiit said.

Other sources said that last week, Mourinho signed autographs for a group of young men who ambushed him moments after he got out of a supermarket and before his body guards led him to his car and sped off.

The UK’s Telegraph newspaper online quoted Mourinho as saying that he was on holiday and was ready to go to Spain to take up his new assignment with Real Madrid.

Mourinho, who is Portuguese, is a brilliant football couch who understands how to handle the media and fans. He is well known for his tactics of diverting pressure and attention from his players.

His love affair with football started at Spanish club, Barcelona where he worked as an interpreter in early 2000. From Barcelona, he went to Porto and helped the team win the Uefa champions league trophy in 2004.

A man who constantly pushes those around him and the rules in order to obtain results, Mourinho then moved to the English premier league where he won back-to-back titles with Chelsea in the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons.

From Chelsea, the man who loves challenges left for Inter, where he once again won the Series A titles back-to-back, crowning it with the champions league last season.