The Sliding Doors of Manchester United: What If Mourinho Had Joined?

“Sliding doors.”

Inside Manchester United, that’s how more than one figure now describes the moment in 2013 when the club let Jose Mourinho slip away as Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor. A decision reversed in a matter of days. A turning point that still hangs over Old Trafford like a question mark.

A new Netflix documentary on Mourinho, released on 11 August, finally pins down what had long been whispered. United thought they had him. Not in theory. In practice.

For weeks, senior United officials had worked on it. Discreet meetings in Madrid. Quiet conversations in London. Ferguson, who admired Mourinho and enjoyed a strong personal rapport with him, stunned the Portuguese by revealing he would step down at the end of the 2012-13 season.

From there, talks accelerated. Terms were discussed. Agreement, those involved say, was reached.

Then, just as United prepared to move into the Mourinho era, everything flipped.

The night the deal died

The reversal was brutal in its speed. “Days,” is how one source puts it. Another insists the groundwork had been too detailed, too advanced, for United to think it was anything other than real.

Ferguson, in the documentary, delivers the pivotal moment with characteristic clarity. One night, the phone rang. On the other end, Mourinho. In tears.

“Alex, I can’t take it. I’ve given my word to Chelsea and I’m not going to break my word.”

That was it. The door slammed shut.

Mourinho pointed to family reasons. His family home was in London. When Chelsea sacked him in 2007, he had promised them he would return. He also enjoyed a productive relationship with Chelsea’s then-owner Roman Abramovich. All of it mattered.

Yet within United, doubt lingers. Some remain unconvinced that family alone dictated the U-turn. What is not disputed is that, for a brief window, United believed they had the one manager with the ego, the record and the shoulders to walk straight into Ferguson’s office and not flinch.

In the same summer, chief executive David Gill was also leaving. Two pillars of the club, gone at once. The sense internally was clear: this was not just about a new manager. It was about rewiring the entire football operation.

Ferguson had been a one-man institution, controlling almost every aspect of the football side. The next phase demanded a different structure, a more modern model, built while United still tried to win.

Mourinho, they felt, could absorb that chaos.

From “The Chosen One” to the wrong one

Once Mourinho stepped away and Pep Guardiola committed himself to Bayern Munich, United’s plan collapsed in on itself. They pivoted to David Moyes.

On paper, Moyes shared some of Ferguson’s traits: work ethic, discipline, a long stint of overachievement at Everton. But he had never operated at the elite level United lived in. That gap proved chasmic.

United announced him as “The Chosen One”. The banner went up. The results never followed.

The contrast with what might have been under Mourinho remains a live conversation inside the club. Where Moyes hesitated in the transfer market, few can picture Mourinho dithering.

Thiago Alcantara, whose move from Barcelona had been agreed in principle, would have been signed, sources insist. The Marouane Fellaini saga – a late, panicked £27.5m deadline-day deal after United missed a cheaper release clause – would not have happened. Fellaini, they say flatly, simply would not have been bought.

Mourinho had even provided United with his opinions on specific players he wanted, including Italy midfielder Daniele de Rossi. The blueprint was there. United just never got to use it.

Mourinho arrives late to a different United

By the time Mourinho finally walked into Old Trafford in 2016, replacing Louis van Gaal two days after the Dutchman lifted the FA Cup, the landscape had shifted.

The dressing room was no longer Ferguson’s. Of the 18 players who had started 10 or more league games in the 2012-13 title-winning season, only six – David de Gea, Phil Jones, Wayne Rooney, Chris Smalling, Michael Carrick and Antonio Valencia – did so in Mourinho’s first campaign.

The squad had aged, turned over, lost its old certainty. The aura of champions had long since faded.

Mourinho had changed as well. He had returned to Chelsea and won another Premier League title, only to depart again in December 2015 with the team languishing in 16th place, one point above the relegation zone. The old siege mentality had curdled. The volatility had grown.

His United tenure still divides opinion. On one hand, he delivered tangible success: the Europa League, the EFL Cup, Champions League qualification twice. He famously called his second-place finish – 19 points behind Manchester City – one of the “best achievements” of his career. The 81 points United amassed that season remain, by some distance, the club’s highest total in the Premier League since Ferguson left.

On the other hand, the internal damage was real. Mourinho clashed with players, most notably record signing Paul Pogba. He criticised the club’s hierarchy for not backing him in the market, particularly over his desire to sell Anthony Martial. The mood around Carrington darkened. The football followed.

The great what-if

Inside Old Trafford, a belief has taken root: Mourinho, in 2013, would have been a very different proposition.

He would have inherited a title-winning squad that, while widely acknowledged to have overperformed under Ferguson, still brimmed with experience and pride. No-one could squeeze more from that group than Ferguson did, but the drop from champions to seventh under Moyes was so sudden, so dramatic, that even the players have struggled to explain it.

The feeling now is that Mourinho’s presence – his confrontational edge, his relentless demands – might have kept the standards higher for longer. He would have believed, without hesitation, that he could improve on Ferguson. He would have attacked the market, forced through deals, imposed himself on the club in a way Moyes never could.

The structure United knew they needed could have been built around a manager strong enough to ride out the turbulence. Instead, they lurched from one model to another, never quite committing, never quite recovering.

In the documentary, Ferguson recounts Mourinho’s tearful phone call with striking precision. The emotion. The apology. The refusal to break a promise to Chelsea.

For United, it was more than a missed appointment. It was the night their future took a different road – one from which, arguably, they are still trying to find their way back.