I FIRST spoke to Jose Mourinho in the spring of 2003, when he was a guest on a radio programme I co-presented on TalkSport. He was in his first full season as manager of Porto and his personal trophy cabinet was bare. Yet the club were on their way to a league title and making a run to the Uefa Cup (which they would ultimately win, defeating Martin O'Neill's Celtic in a memorable final), while the young Portuguese manager was already making a name for himself.

Mourinho was personable and easy-going, a pleasure to speak to. The self-confidence which some would term arrogance was already there, but, with it, a sense that he wanted to be liked. One quote stands out (and I may be paraphrasing here: it has been a long time).

"When you manage Porto, you are like the Barcelona or the Manchester United of Portugal, you have to win," he said. "There are no excuses, because you are bigger than most of the other teams in the Portuguese League. That, most of all, is my job. I can't hide. I have to take everything on my shoulders. And I have to find a way to win at all costs. When I am in Portugal, I know my playerrs are better than most of the other teams. And when I am in the UEFA Cup, I have to convince my players they are better than the other teams, even if I know in my heart they are not. Because I have to win by any means necessary."

Those words came to mind Friday night when he addressed the media in his first televised interview since leaving Chelsea last week. Whatever else one might think about him, it's difficult to deny that, as Chelsea manager, he never hid, he never shirked his responsibility to win. And to do it, paraphrasing Malcolm X, by any means necessary.

That's where the "Mourinho at war" line comes in. As he said Friday, "I am a man of war during competition." And, in war, the line between fair and foul often gets blurred. Which may explain some of the more outrageous things he has said and done during his tenure at Stamford Bridge. Everyone who stood in his path to victory was an enemy. It was the George W Bush mantra: "You're either with us or against us."

Thus we witnessed scathing attacks on referees, the most notable, of course, being Anders Frisk, whom he accused of meeting with Barcelona officials at half-time during their Champions' League clash. And we saw him tangling with opposing managers, sometimes going straight down into the gutter with the venom and tastelessness of his attacks, none more so than when he called Arsene Wenger a "voyeur".

Many pundits have wondered whether this behaviour, which sometimes ranged from the graceless to the mean-spirited, meant that Mourinho really believed his own words or whether it was all calculated, all part of his personal war on behalf of his club. As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out. We will most likely find out in the next few months, during his time off, when Mourinho returns to being - by his own words - a "man of peace".

The word most easily associated with Mourinho right now is "winner". Four league titles, three domestic cups, two League Cups, a Uefa Cup and a Champions' League crown in five full seasons at Chelsea and Porto speak for themselves. But it's not just the silverware, it's the self-belief he drilled into his players. He made them believe.

"In his first two seasons I would say that there were maybe two guys here who genuinely did not like him and did not believe in him as a person," one Chelsea player, who asked not to be identified, told me on Friday. "It was incredible, he won us all over one by one. And that was despite the fact that most of us really liked his predecessor, Claudio Ranieri, and felt that he had been treated badly by the club. That changed a bit when Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko came. For whatever reason, he wasn't able to build the same relationship with them. But still, I've been in football for 15 years and I've never seen a manager enjoy such blind confidence from his players."

Which brings us neatly to one (or two) of the main reasons he is no longer the Chelsea boss: Ballack and Shevchenko. The English press - whose love-hate barometer with Mourinho is now firmly fixed in the "love" end - depict the pair as overrated, overpaid, foreign mercenaries who were imposed on Mourinho by a guileless Russian billionaire who knows nothing about football. While it may be true that neither was bought at Mourinho's urging, it's equally clear that both are genuine stars who proved in the past decade that they are among the best in the world.

Was it really too much to ask that Mourinho find a way to integrate them effectively into his team? Especially since he had already done this with other players? Both Claude Makelele and Hernan Crespo were high-priced foreigners who were not bought by Mourinho and who - one can say this safely - chose Chelsea because of the size of their weekly wages (indeed, towards the end of his first season at the club, Makelele famously said "I look at this club and these team-mates and I feel like crying... but then I look at my bank balance and I feel like laughing.") Yet Mourinho found a way to turn them both into productive players, something he wasn't able to do with Ballack or Shevchenko.

Instead, he did nothing to dispel the notion that both were "unwanted gifts from above". Some have suggested that the difference was purely timing. By the time they arrived at Stamford Bridge, enough had changed in his relationship with the club and his stature as a manager that he simply felt he could do without them, knowing that, if anything, they would provide a convenient alibi if things went awry.

Another shortcoming was on a personal level, in terms of the relationship with other officials at the club. To be fair, this is a two-way street. The club, believing that one day Mourinho would be gone, brought in a raft of people, many of them big names with big personalities, who orbited Roman Abramovich offering up "advice". Some were Chelsea employees, some were not: all had the owner's ear. From Peter Kenyon to Frank Arnesen to Dave Worthington to Avram Grant to Pini Zahavi, the list goes on and on. It's hard to apportion blame here, but there is little question that a good working relationship was never developed among them and Mourinho. And, inevitably, when Mourinho saw the kind of power Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger enjoyed at their own clubs, it's understandable that he grew somewhat resentful. It was almost as if the more trophies he won the more the club tried to limit his power.

The third fault is perhaps the most contentious. Mourinho's Chelsea simply were not an entertaining team to watch. While some will object that the point of the game is winning and not entertaining, it's undeniable that Abramovich had made it clear: Cheslea was a plaything, he wanted to have fun. And while at first merely winning was enjoyable, over time the owner wanted more.

For whatever reason, few players with the kind of creativity and flair which Abramovich craves managed to succeed at Stamford Bridge. From Arjen Robben to Adrian Mutu to Shaun Wright-Philips to, arguably, Joe Cole: none managed to establish themselves as the kind of players Mourinho felt comfortable to build his team around. This became particularly obvious with the rise of Didier Drogba: the temptation to keep things tight at the back and hit it up to the big man, allowing midfielders like Frank Lampard and Michael Essien to feed off the scraps was just too strong.

It's not a question of whether this is fair or not. Rather, it's about realpolitik. Abramovich's brief to Mourinho became winning and entertaining. And the Russian was not entertained as much as he would have liked.

None of this should take away from his achievements and his qualities. Mourinho's defensive organisation is as close to perfect as it gets in the modern game. And his ability to inspire and create a cohesive unit (with a few exceptions) in difficult circumstances is equally remarkable. There is no question that, right now, he's in the highest echelon of managers.

Whether his career continues along the same impressive arc will depend on his next job and how much he learned at Chelsea. As the game, increasingly, becomes a televisual spectacle, the ability to entertain becomes more and more of an imperative. It's something to which he will have to adapt, perhaps introducing more varied attacking schemes. And he will also need to accept the fact that the figure of the all-powerful manager is nearing extinction. Short of Wenger and Sir Alex, there aren't too many out there. Which means that dealing with interference, however well-meaning, from chairmen, sporting directors, technical directors and agents will be part of his job description, especially if he goes to Spain or Italy. And, with that, will come a need to find a way to work with the superstars, even those who he didn't personally select.

At 44, he has plenty of time to learn. He is bright and has all the tools to be one of the all-time greats, provided he continues to develop as a manager. And, perhaps, the next step in his development will be realising that to be successful doesn't necessarily involve being in a permanent state of war.