Inter Milan coach Jose Mourinho has declared he wants to return to the Premiership.
Mourinho, who had three full seasons at Chelsea after making Porto champions of Europe as well as his native Portugal, is in his second season with Inter Milan and on top of Serie A, having already celebrated one national title in Italy, his fifth over seven seasons in three countries.
“I want to build something,” he told The Times.
"Clearly it is unrealistic to expect to stay at a club as long as Sir Alex, but I am ready for the next phase of my career,” he said. “I want to work with a different perspective.
“At Porto, my objective was to win to earn the right to go abroad. At Chelsea, my ambition was to create a bit of history [the club had not won the title for half a century]. But I always knew Chelsea lacked the normal English culture of stability.
“I was never under any illusions. I understood the personality of Roman and the culture of the people around him [Mourinho carefully exempted Peter Kenyon, the outgoing chief executive, from this] and knew it was not a job for ten years.
“My role was to give this man what he wanted — victory — knowing that, sooner or later, my time would finish, because there were too many things going on around me.
“In Italy, I was coming to the motherland of tactics, the country of catenaccio and defensive football. The objective was to win not only in a third different league but a place where they say foreign coaches have had little success. But the time will come for stability.
“I love Inter and would love to build for the future here. In fact, I am doing it now, because I am not a selfish coach and I’m thinking about the future in terms of youth development and the age structure of my first team — but Italy is not the country for this. England is the country. And my football is English football.”
