That romance has gradually turned sour, yet in my view we should still be embracing him for all his worth - and as far as the media are concerned, he is worth quite a lot. He can fill the back pages with a quick quote or a flash of his moody demeanour.

Although I am no longer a soccer scribe, I love him almost as much as I love Muhammad Ali because he is such good copy, But I seem to be in the minority. "It's the return of football's number one narcissist," declared the Mail on Sunday’s Oliver Holt. "I give it two years." 

While its sister daily paper was quick to yell: "The mask slips", adding "Snarling Mourinho is back", after his latest club Tottenham Hotspur had lost at Southampton.

During that game, Mourinho was sent to the stands by the referee after a heated shouting match with the Saints coaching bench. Afterwards, he was asked whether he was rude to anyone. He replied, "Yes, I was rude, but I was rude to an idiot."

That, of course, was meat and drink to journos and it is what José can be all about. Sometimes.

When he told us some years ago that he was the "Special One", it was a comment worthy of Ali's "I am The Greatest" and football writers have lived off it ever since. As has Mourinho himself.

Yet Mourinho's managerial CV reads like an applicant for a professorship of football: Benfica, Porto, Chelsea (twice), Inter Milan, Real Madrid and now Tottenham Hotspur - all of which began under the tutorship of Sir Bobby Robson at Sporting Lisbon. Initially he was a translator for Robson and, talking of his English, I recall my first encounter with him many years back when he brought Porto to Manchester United - and announced his arrival on the international scene with a triumphant lap of honour after a victory which eliminated United from the Champions League. 

At the press conference afterwards, I was not alone in thinking that Mourinho's English was far easier to comprehend than Alex Ferguson's Glaswegian brogue.

After his sacking by United - never a happy marriage that one - it is noticeable that he is more reserved and cuts an even more sombre character.

So, what shall we see from him at Spurs? Certainly not a Premier League title this season, with a place in Europe his principal goal.

I am not a Spurs fan - what sympathies I have with football are further east in London at West Ham, a club with less dosh and, apparently, less ambition.

True, even the wealthy Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy may not be able to match Russian Roman Abramovich's billions, but his is a big enough club to accommodate someone like Mourinho with a big enough ambition, and it has to be said, ego. 

Someone once remarked to me that José Mourinho was football's version of a method actor, somewhere between James Dean and Marlon Brando, softly spoken. introspective, yet exuding high drama. However, I was watching a documentary about the late Hollywood star Robert Mitchum a few nights back and there, to me, was Mourinho personified. Brooding, but capturing his audience with an attraction extending beyond the part he was playing.

Mitchum will be well-remembered for cowboy roles, but he was a fabulous dramatic actor also, with movies including Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear which, as in his Westerns, he always played the archetypal cool, sardonic anti-hero - remind you of anyone? He was also a director and writer of several classic movies during the 50s and 60s.

Mitchum was a great fan of Shakespeare, though to my knowledge he never acted in any of his plays. I believe Mourinho is a Shakespeare buff, too. He certainly seems to love all things British. London is his favourite city. He still lives near the Chelsea ground and could often be seen browsing in bookshops or sipping a coffee in one of the Kings Road bistros.

Unlike so many in the game, his personal life has always been blameless. He has a long and stable marriage and is a strict a strict Roman Catholic. "The most important thing in my life is my family and being a good father," he once said.

Outside of that apparently severe exterior, there is a man who does an immense amount of charity work, including a long-standing attempt to bring Palestinian and Israeli kids together through football.

One criticism of him at Manchester United was that his brand of football had become too conservative.

At Tottenham, where he has inherited that now sadly injured England striker Harry Kane, this season may not be an over-productive one for Spurs, but I do believe that next season Mourinho will show that he still has qualities that have made him one of the world's outstanding managers. And that Spurs, at least, will challenge strongly for the title in a game he has graced, rather than disgraced.

Indeed, so-called "Bolshie" anti-Establishment figures such as Mourinho, Brian Clough, Malcolm Allison, Gazza, even Sir Alf Ramsey, have enriched English football and we should salute them - not sneer at them.

Interestingly, the late Hugh McIlvanney, arguably Britain's greatest ever sports writer, was an aficionado of such men, especially Mourinho, with a great understanding of, and insight into, the man himself. 

He knew he was a winner, a man of medals, exactly the type that David Walsh, McIlvanney's successor as an astute commentator on the back pages of the Sunday Times, has kind words, suggesting Mourinho brings to mind Shakespeare's Coriolanus - the Italian general whom the Roman Senate wanted to promote to a consul. They warned Coriolanus that he would have to go among the people and show himself to be humble. This was difficult for Coriolanus, because humility and a common touch didn't come easy. He was a soldier and a winner. "Would you have me be untrue to my nature," he asked. "Would you rather I pretend to be someone else… why do you wish me milder?"

The question, as Walsh so aptly puts it, is whether Mourinho can succeed whree Coriolanus failed.

 Let's not make our minds up yet. Just as long as José knows the way to go.