Where Mourinho might end up could be a big surprise

José Mourinho's reputation for winning has followed him at every stop on his career. Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

MAILBAG Gabriele Marcotti will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Out of sight, out of mind? Hardly. José Mourinho may have retired to his Portuguese hideaway last September, but his presence still hovers over the game.

Just ask Avram Grant, his successor at Chelsea who is constantly (and unfavorably) compared to the "Special One." You'd think the fact that Chelsea is still in the running for a Premier League/Champions League double might take some of the pressure off the Israeli boss and maybe even make you wonder whether there really is an abyss between Grant and Mourinho in terms of managerial ability.

But no: One guy is a genius, the other is Forrest Gump's less likeable brother, the one who raids Johnny Cash's wardrobe.

Anyway, Mourinho was never going to stay out of the headlines, not least because he's angling for his next job. His résumé is frighteningly good: four league titles (though one of them, the one he won with FC Porto in 2003-04, may yet be stripped), four domestic cups, a UEFA Cup and a Champions League title in six full seasons of management amount to, on paper, a ticket to anywhere he wants to go.

Except the game doesn't quite work like that. Mourinho's agent and his close advisors have been shopping him around for the past six months, linking him with a variety of jobs: England, AC Milan, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and, most recently, Inter Milan.

Some of those links are pure agentspeak (i.e. they're made up) -- Milan and Bayern come to mind. Other ships have sailed (England). But the fact remains that Mourinho's stature inevitably places him at or near the top of any club's shopping list.

So where will he go? Maybe it's easier to rule out where he won't go. For starters, he needs a big club with lots of transfer clout or a really prestigious national team (otherwise, why bother?). With the England job off the table, you can rule out international management. England is the only top-tier nation that would hire a foreign coach and pay him top dollar (which is, ultimately what it did).

Manchester United and Arsenal aren't options either. Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger aren't going anywhere. With Jürgen Klinsmann taking over at Bayern next season, that rules out the German club as well. Liverpool could conceivably be a possibility if Rafa Benítez leaves, but it's unlikely that anything will happen until the club's ownership situation sorts itself out and that won't happen for some time.

Juventus would be an intriguing choice. However, Claudio Ranieri is doing very well in the Bianconeri's first season back in the big time and it would be cruel if he were to lose his job to Mourinho twice in four years. Plus, the club still hasn't fully recovered from the trauma of the '06 Calciopoli scandal.

Mourinho's crew was pushing Milan as a possible destination. While it's true that the club needs a major rebuilding job, it's equally true that Carlo Ancelotti remains popular among players and club officials. Plus, if one of Mourinho's problems at Chelsea was that he got too much interference from above and that the owner was bored by his style of play, Milan is the wrong place for him.

The club is obsessed with entertaining soccer and being Milan manager means constantly mediating between the players and the many "suggestions" coming from the club (primarily in the form of Adriano Galliani and the ebullient owner, Silvio Berlusconi).

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