Moments can change things. Games, seasons, careers.

Jose Mourinho needed a moment. He needed something close to a miracle to save his first season back at Benfica, where he had first managed at senior level 26 years ago, and that was before their final league-phase match in the Champions League, at home against Real Madrid, had even begun on Wednesday evening.

Out of both Portuguese cups and a distant third in the Primeira Liga, 10 points behind leaders Porto, the unlikely chance of making it to the Champions League’s play-off round next month was their only hope of salvaging something tangible from the campaign.

But they began the night two points and five places outside the top 24 in the 36-team table, meaning they had to beat Madrid and hope a whole bunch of results elsewhere went their way.

Remarkably, almost all of those results did go their way. But it wasn’t quite enough. As the clock advanced deeper into stoppage time, suddenly, arms started waving everywhere. Benfica were 3-2 up, but their coaching staff had only just realised they needed one more goal to squeak above Marseille, and into the play-offs in 24th place. The Lisbon crowd had realised a few minutes earlier. The 17 other games across Europe had all ended, so they were trying to pass on the message, but it hadn’t yet reached the home dugout.

Mourinho had already made all of his substitutions, including taking off his entire front four, trying to see out a win. When he was finally told the truth, he was livid. Moments earlier, his goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin had been actively wasting time. When his coaches and team-mates on the bench then started screaming at him to hurry up, he looked baffled.

Then Benfica won a free kick in Madrid territory, and Mourinho waved Trubin upfield, hoping for a miracle…

Things haven’t quite gone to plan since Mourinho was appointed for his second spell as Benfica manager, back in September.

But what happened on an otherwise normal early Saturday morning at the club’s training ground, to the south of Lisbon city centre, wasn’t really about him.

Around 200 of the club’s fans, mostly members of the ‘No Name Boys’ ultras group, showed up at the gates, demanding to be let in, and demanding answers from club president Rui Costa and pretty much anyone else from the hierarchy who would speak to them. As detailed above, Benfica were off the pace in the league, out of the two Portuguese cups and seemingly heading out of Europe — all with a squad filled with questionable recruits, creaking veterans and unproven kids.

Rui Costa might reasonably have argued that they won the league as recently as 2023 and last season’s League Cup, which by any definition can’t count as a ‘drought’, but the sentiment was clear.

Rui Costa wasn’t there that morning. But sporting director Mario Branco was, so four of the 200 were let in to speak with him, in the room usually used for press conferences. Technical director Simao Sabrosa then joined him, and eventually, the rest of the throng were allowed in and placed on the bleachers next to the training pitch. There, they were addressed by Mourinho and a selection of senior players, including club captain Nicolas Otamendi.

Pretty much everyone involved has been at pains to play down the incident. No footage, audio or even accounts of what was said have leaked from the ultras, who make a point of not speaking to the media. The club released a statement that described the fans “spontaneously and peacefully” putting their point across. One figure with knowledge of the situation, granted anonymity to protect relationships, described it as “not really a confrontation”, more a civilised chat.

When asked about it before the Madrid game, Mourinho demurred to Benfica’s statement, while Otamendi said: “It wasn’t a complaint, but rather support for us. The fans experience it the same way we have to experience it. They have the right to come and support us, to demand more from us, because this is one of the biggest clubs in the world. Demands are always important for players, so they don’t relax, so they continue to grow and work when the results aren’t there; that’s the most important thing.”

While those fans were not happy about the results and performances this season under Mourinho, their main beef is with Rui Costa and their perception of how Benfica have been run in recent years. Even their previous eye for talent to sell on seems to have developed cataracts: in the current squad, there are some very good players, but not an obvious next Enzo Fernandez, Darwin Nunez or Ruben Dias.

When Bruno Lage was sacked in September, Rui Costa went big. He called Mourinho. This was unfinished business, a return ‘home’ for the manager who started his career at Benfica in September 2000, but who left that role after only a few months. He then won everything with Portuguese rivals Porto, left for Chelsea in summer 2004 and hadn’t worked back in his homeland since.

You hesitate to use the tired cliche that Mourinho is ‘box office’, but people are still fascinated by him. There’s a reason we’re writing this article, and there’s a reason you’re reading it: would either be happening if it were just ‘some guy’ in charge of Benfica? Nope.

The day before the Madrid game, a journalist from Spanish newspaper AS walked past him at the Benfica training ground. “Mister, everyone is talking about Mourinho!” the journalist said. “I’m sure they’re wrong,” Mourinho replied.

He’s still broadly popular throughout Portugal, aside from with a section of the Porto support: there was a curious incident before he rejoined Benfica where, having been fired by Fenerbahce in August after the Turkish club were knocked out by Benfica in the Champions League qualifiers, he showed up, unannounced, at a Porto game, and with a tear in his eye soaked up the hero’s acclaim from the fans for whom he won the Champions League in 2004.

Then, a week later, he took the Benfica gig, saying all the right things to his new fans, but simultaneously irking the ones he was just waving to.

When Mourinho was appointed, the questions for Rui Costa primarily centred on the idea that this was essentially a PR move to help him in the impending presidential elections. Rui Costa, who won 94 caps for Portugal, denied this, but if it was a PR move, it worked: he won the elections in November with 65.89 per cent of the votes.

This fits with a theme: a big part of why Fenerbahce went all out for Mourinho in 2024 was because then-president Ali Koc was increasingly unpopular, and needed a bump for his own election campaign. It worked then, too… or at least it did in the short term: Koc was re-elected that summer but was eventually ousted last September, not long after Mourinho was sacked.

Jose Mourinho is making every effort at Benfica, even staying at the training ground overnight (Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

In some respects, it’s a shame to think of someone with Mourinho’s career as a walking billboard, a manager who still has the wattage to prop up flailing presidents’ political ambitions, but isn’t really considered by the real elite, as he once was. But he’s still enthusiastic, if nothing else: he might not always look it in public, but he is throwing everything into this job, virtually living at the training ground, even staying overnight there for three or four nights a week, despite having a home in nearby Lisbon.

There has been a public emphasis on young players, something Mourinho is not known for historically, but in fairness, six academy graduates have made their debuts under him and a few youngsters look quite promising, chiefly 19-year-old Argentine winger Gianluca Prestianni.

There is justifiable scepticism that this is a deliberate philosophical shift, but rather a reaction to injury and circumstance, combined with an attempt to generate some enthusiasm about an otherwise underwhelming set of players.

Mourinho inherited a curiously constructed squad, shorn of many key players from last season — including Angel Di Maria (who moved to Rosario), Kerem Akturkoglu (Fenerbahce), Alvaro Carreras (Real Madrid) and Florentino Luis (Burnley) — most of whom were underwhelmingly replaced. Injuries to Dodi Lukebakio, Bruma and Alexander Bah have further depleted his resources. Benfica also didn’t really have any senior wingers, so he had to improvise, fashioning a few from kids and converted midfielders.

A few players stand out, mainly their relentless Greek centre-forward Vangelis Pavlidis, who has already scored 27 goals this season, while centre-backs Antonio Silva and Tomas Araujo could be targeted by clubs with deeper pockets in the summer.

Greek striker Vangelis Pavlidis has been one of Benfica’s few standout players this season (Patricia de Melo Moreira / AFP via Getty Images)

All of that said, you can’t call Mourinho’s tenure a success. Not yet, at least.

Those two exits from the domestic cups came in back-to-back games within a week early this month, a one-two punch that seemed to torpedo the season completely. Benfica are actually still unbeaten in the league, but have drawn too many games (six from the 19) to have a realistic chance of challenging for the title. Their defensive record is strong and their attacking numbers solid, but the football has often not been great.

Which sounds familiar, as do a few other things.

He’s still the same old Jose in many respects, and now and then, he’ll say or do something that makes you think, ‘Oh yeah. There he is. I remember that guy’.

After Benfica lost 3-1 at home to Braga in a League Cup semi-final on January 7, he made the entire squad stay overnight at the training ground. They call it ritiro in Italian football, where it happens semi-frequently, and depending on your point of view, it’s either a sensible method of encouraging togetherness or a form of punishment, detention even.

Actually, there were plans for players to stay there, whatever the result of the game, but Mourinho made it clear that part of the motivation was to make the players feel the result, and reflect on their performances. “I hope the players will sleep as well as I do — which is to say that they won’t sleep at all,” he said. (Seven days later, Benfica lost 1-0 at Porto in the last eight of the Portuguese Cup.)

He still, to put things lightly, pays plenty of attention to how he is portrayed in the Portuguese media.

After Benfica rebounded from that Porto cup defeat with a 2-0 win at Rio Ave three days later, Mourinho was asked by reporters about his use of wingers, who should play in the No 10 role and whether public debate had shaped how he had approached the game.

Mourinho cranked up the passive-aggression to 11, and replied: “You have to ask whoever is talking. I don’t understand anything about tactics and dynamics. Those who talk about these things are the people who know a lot. It’s better to talk to them. I understand little about it.”

On the one hand, maybe you can’t blame a man for arguing his corner. But on the other: why bother? What does he gain from that sort of thing? But that’s his nature. He turned 63 last Monday. If he hasn’t changed by now, he never will.

Those close to him emphasise that he has a contract until the summer of 2027, and he’s not looking beyond this season. But it is impossible to ignore the spectre of the Portugal national team, a job that he has always coveted: Roberto Martinez’s deal runs until after the World Cup ends in July, and while there’s no guarantee he will actually leave the role then, it would be a natural time to make a change, whether things go really well or really badly for Portugal in the tournament.

Complicating things a little is an unusual element of Mourinho’s Benfica contract: there is a mutual break clause that states either party can decide to go their separate ways, but they must decide within 10 days of the season’s end. That will happen well before the World Cup starts in early June, even if they get to the Champions League final on May 30, so it would be difficult for him to make any decision based on Martinez’s status.

Still, given his agent is Jorge Mendes — football’s equivalent of The Entity from the last Mission: Impossible films, who exists everywhere rather than merely as a single corporeal being — if he really wants the Portugal gig, he’ll get it.

For now, though, it’s all Benfica, and retrieving this season from the brink.

Mourinho is apparently still really good at predicting how games will pan out: one thing his players in the real glory days at Chelsea or Inter would recall with wonder is how he would carefully explain how an upcoming match would go, and it would happen exactly as he foretold. The difference now is that he either can’t affect games in the same way he used to, or doesn’t have the resources to do so.

Still, even he couldn’t have predicted how the meeting with Madrid this week would pan out.

He had committed to “closing the door” when the shout came that Benfica actually needed one more goal. Trubin — “the big man”, as Mourinho called him afterwards — was sent up. By that stage, Madrid had lost two players to red cards, so their defensive options were depleted, but let’s not pretend this was a clever tactical move taking advantage of the opponents’ weakness: it was the sort of desperate thing that any manager would have done. It’s just that this time, astonishingly, it worked.

Trubin rose, the ball seeking out his forehead as if guided by some irresistible narrative laser, and he headed past opposite number Thibaut Courtois. Everyone started running in different directions. Mourinho shot off down the touchline, fingers jabbing the air, hugging a ballboy in jubilation.

It was a freak moment born of desperation and sudden realisation, but also no less than Benfica deserved. Mourinho told Madrid defender Dean Huijsen, with whom he had worked at Roma, that the visitors were lucky it only ended 4-2, and he was right: this was, by all accounts, Benfica’s best performance under him.

What next, then?

With Friday’s draw having turned up an instant two-leg rematch with Madrid in the play-offs, will Wednesday turn out to be an isolated moment of glory, or the catalyst for something more? What will it mean for the rest of Benfica’s season? What will it mean for Mourinho?

Moments can change things. Games, seasons, careers. Final acts.

Maybe this moment will change something for Mourinho.