Manchester: Modesty has never been Jose Mourinho’s strongest suit, so the new boss of Manchester United can hardly be expected to live in a humble abode when he moves to the North West.
Yet, finding a property that is special enough for the ‘Special One’ might be a struggle, according to estate agents who are poised by their phones, hoping for his call. Sources close to Mourinho insist that he wants to live in the city centre, as he has always done whenever he has moved to a new club, and will be looking to rent a luxury flat as his base, while his wife and children remain in London.
Manchester, however, is not Milan, Madrid or London, and has a distinct shortage of city-centre flats to suit Mourinho’s budget. The Portuguese will earn £12 million (Dh64 million) per year at Old Trafford — or £32,876 per day — but the most expensive flats on the market are around £6,000 per month, the sort of money Mourinho could afford to lose down the back of the sofa. Ged McPartlin, sales director for Manchester estate agency Ascend Properties, said: “There are only three or four developments that are likely to suit his taste, and even then there aren’t really any huge flats in them.
“He is used to living in much bigger cities, and Manchester just doesn’t have the sort of properties he is going to want. There isn’t the demand. All the people who could afford luxury flats, like footballers, live out of town because it’s very easy to commute.”
A source close to Mourinho said: “If you look at where he’s lived before, it’s always been city centres. That’s what he likes. There have been stories in the papers about him looking at mansions in Cheshire, but that’s way wide of the mark.”
Mourinho currently lives with his Angolan-born wife Matilde “Tami” Faria, their daughter Matilde, 20, who is at college in London, and son Jose Jr, 16, who is on the books of Fulham FC academy as a goalkeeper. They will carry on living in the family’s pounds 10 million five-storey, seven-bedroom town house in Belgravia while Mourinho commutes to and from work.
The most likely place for Mourinho to start flat-hunting is the 48-storey Beetham Tower, where the biggest flats cost between pounds 4,000 and pounds 6,000 per month. He will have to forget about the penthouse, however, as the architect, Ian Simpson, kept the top two floors for himself. Phil Neville, the former Manchester United midfielder, owns a three-storey flat in the block, which costs pounds 15,000 per month to rent, but is not thought to be currently available.
Other possibilities include No. 1 Deansgate, built as part of the city’s redevelopment after the 1996 IRA bombing, the Grade II listed Century Buildings and the glass and steel Great Northern Tower. Once he has found somewhere to live, Mourinho will, at least, be able to indulge his passion for films, and is likely to visit the Home cinema, theatre and arts complex, famed for showing offbeat independent and foreign films, including some in Portuguese.
Daniel Pyke, box office supervisor, said: “Juan Mata [the United midfielder] sometimes comes in to watch films in Spanish, and we have a Spanish and Latin film season once a year that Jose might like. We do also get some films in Portuguese.”
