Jose Mourinho is an accomplished man. He’s won everything there is to win in the game, and perhaps one day he’ll retire to a beach somewhere, stepping off a deck chair just often enough to guide some lucky national team through a qualifying campaign and on to a World Cup triumph.

When you look at your career from the very first rung on the ladder, life’s like that. You see it all in front of you, less as a mountain to climb and more as a delicious meal to devour. Mourinho devoured it with an insatiable appetite. So far Jose is 52 and has won the league and the domestic cup in every country he’s managed in, as well as two Champions Leagues.

I can’t speak for Mourinho, obviously, but I’d imagine that if you asked him what his biggest regret is, he’d probably answer not winning the Champions League with Chelsea or Real Madrid. At this point, given that he has at least one more chance with Chelsea, the failure with Real Madrid is probably top of his list.

Now, you never know. He may give you a different answer if pushed. But surely that’s high on the list. For a man who has won everything, the only thing that’s left is to better it incrementally. The goal isn’t simply to win everything, it’s to win everything with each club. League, cup and European cup trebles at every club. Then you’ve completed club football. International football is a bonus level. Then you reach the credits.

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You can never say never in football, but you get the feeling that Jose won’t have another crack at Real Madrid. Given the emotion that surrounds both Real and Barcelona and given that he left Madrid under such a huge cloud, you’d imagine that he won’t go back there. And the noises he’s making right now are that he’d like to stay at Chelsea forever. I can see that happening so long as he doesn’t have another run in with the big man (in the boardroom) upstairs.

So, Jose won’t want to make the same mistake at Chelsea. It’s funny though, isn’t it - calling the ‘failure’ to win the Champions League a mistake. It’s not like Mourinho will be graded once he retires for good with a big pen mark next to his trophy haul and a note saying ‘see me.’ But that’s the level we’re talking about here.

And now that Mourinho is back at the Bridge again, now that he’s settled in his luxury home and his slippers and dressing gown are broken in, he can look to get down to business. Last season was the perfect way to start, a league title and domestic trophy won without breaking into a sweat. Next season, perhaps an FA Cup would be nice, but he already has a fair few of those. The only thing missing from his time at Chelsea is a Champions League trophy.

He made mistakes against PSG last year when his side were knocked out. When they had the lead both in terms of the scoreline and the manpower, Mourinho threw on Kurt Zouma to see out the game, effectively telling his side to drop deeper and invite a PSG side forward - a PSG side with vast amounts of power and literally nothing to lose in the game. They were going out anyway. Throwing on Drogba at that point would have curbed the power of the PSG centre backs whilst also giving them a problem at the back too. Instead, David Luiz came back to haunt them.

Clearly Mourinho isn’t infallible, but his side are definitely capable of doing better next season. And what if Mourinho wants them to prove it, if only so he can get his name on that famous big-eared trophy for a third time, and a first time with a club that he loves so dearly?

And maybe that gives hope to the title contenders on the domestic front too. Maybe if Mourinho simply wants to have a team that can bring him the prize that’s missing from his Chelsea collection then he’ll have to prioritise that competition before the Premier League.

Arsene Wenger has already beaten Mourinho once this summer - although I can’t imagine Mourinho is upset about that any more than you or I would be after losing to that flatmate you can’t stand at a game of pool. Manuel Pellegrini might be watching with brightened eyes as he seeks to regain the Premier League title in what could be his last season at the club. And Louis Van Gaal might see this as an opportunity to put an English league title onto his own stellar CV. He himself has won the league at every club he’s managed.

Chelsea won’t find it easy this season on any front, but Mourinho has only one box left to tick as Chelsea manager before he can simply have some fun coaching his club. I wonder whether Mourinho’s sense of adventure and career ambition will trump Chelsea’s desire to be the best in England. The Champions League is a bit more of a gamble, one bad game and you could be dumped out - as Arsenal found last season against Monaco.

Jose Mourinho is still young in managerial terms, but he’s done it all. If he only has one regret, maybe that itch will be just too tempting to scratch next season. If Mourinho does have a Captain Ahab-like obsession with the Moby Dick of the Champions League, then will it let others into the title race? This season could be much closer in the race for the title than last season if he does.

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