Jose Mourinho names his top three footballers of all time; Cristiano Ronaldo excluded

Mourinho surprisingly named Lionel Messi on his list.

Given the players he has managed in his professional career, Jose Mourinho’s response to the 2016 question on the top three football players of all time was intriguing. There was no Cristiano Ronaldo in his final three. But the Portuguese coach made room for Lionel Messi.

As a coach or “interpreter,” Mourinho has collaborated with several of the greatest names in football history, including Didier Drogba, Karim Benzema, Rivaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Luka Modric, John Terry, Frank Lampard, and Ronaldo Nazario.

Despite the fact that Mourinho has never coached Messi, the two have frequently faced off in LaLiga and in the UEFA Champions League.

Because he understood what he was up against, Mourinho would devise unique strategies to counter Messi’s threat. The guy himself once referred to Messi as “a god of football.”

When asked by TNT Sports which player he wanted to have signed, Jose Mourinho didn’t specifically mention Messi, but we believe it’s very obvious who he was referring to:

“Of course I would have to say the little guy, but the little guy was not coachable. But I have to say, in our generation, he was the best.”

“Messi has never needed a coach. Who tells you ‘I coached Messi’? It’s absurd. Messi knows everything, he was born with everything. You can only say that I had the honor of having trained him.”

Many people who watched Maradona play still believe he was the greatest of all time.

El Diego pulled a struggling Napoli team from the bottom of Serie A to the Scudetto and led Argentina to World Cup glory. He enjoyed life to the fullest, and on the field, he demonstrated this by accomplishing things that only he could do.

Of course, Jose Mourinho was a big fan. He stated to BT Sport in regards to the top three best players apart from Messi:

“There is Maradona and there is Diego Maradona I don’t need to speak about because the world knows and nobody will forget. Diego is different, the people that are the big friends of him, the people that share dressing rooms with him, colleagues, these guys are privileged.”

“It was a bit similar with Di Stefano; I never saw him play football, but my dad made sure I knew a lot about him.”

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