The wife of José Mourinho advised him not to take the manager job of England in 2007.
“My wife [Matilde] was right,” he said. “She told me not to take it. Frank Lampard, John Terry, Ashley Cole: everybody was saying: ‘Come, come, come.’ But I cannot be spending two years playing against Kazakhstan and San Marino. It’s not for me, and she was right.”
Speaking on behalf of Yahoo, for whom he is working as a pundit during the World Cup, Mourinho said: “England is the kind of team where I am always expecting something good but I am never surprised when things go wrong. In every country I know, especially my own country, people live football in a very emotional way. Normally, the press is critical until the moment the team is selected.
“But then the moment the team is chosen, everybody is together. No more critics. There is a period of complete support. I’m not so sure with the mentality in this country.”