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Jose Mourinho has described one of his previous jobs in football as a “big bulls***”, saying it was effectively a cover for a very different role.

The new Netflix documentary MOURINHO follows the career of the Portuguese coach, one of the game’s most iconic personalities, a manager who has been in charge of clubs such as Chelsea, Real Madrid and Manchester United.

Now 63, Mourinho has just started his second spell as Real Madrid coach, but in the 1990s he worked for their rivals Barcelona.

Jose Mourinho was pictured this summer in his new role as Real Madrid coach, for the second time.

Mourinho was well known as the interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson, who was managing the Catalan club at the time, but he has now referred to his own position at Barcelona as a “big bulls***”.

In the three-part series MOURINHO, archive audio features the late Robson saying: “Jose is a good-looking chap, very shy – a bit nervous perhaps – but at the same time, he had an air of confidence about him.

“He had a very small, minor coaching qualification, but he was bright. And he stood beside me, very often behind me, the best-paid interpreter in the world.”

Mourinho then says in the present day: “Back then, I was working with Mr Robson. It’s a big bulls***, the translator job. It’s a big bulls***, it’s a big bulls***.”

When asked what exactly he meant, Mourinho explains: “I was the goalkeeping coach, I was the analyst, I was the scout. Because I studied sports science at university, I could even help in the gym. I was doing everything for the boss, everything for the team.

“If you speak English and nobody else does, that doesn’t mean that you are a translator. It means that you are academically at the superior level.

“But I was not a translator; I was Mr Bobby Robson’s assistant coach. We worked together for one season, then the next season came Mr [Louis] Van Gaal.”

Van Gaal is then heard saying, “I said to Jose: ‘Maybe you can proceed as my assistant.’ It was a big gamble, because I [didn’t] know him.”

Sir Bobby Robson (left) and Mourinho (right) were pictured together in 1996.

In the documentary, Mourinho suggests that his spell as Robson’s interpreter was similar to his days as a ball boy when his father was a manager. He says in the series that he used those ball-boy duties to study matches and pass information on to his father.

Mourinho’s period at Barcelona was followed by two coaching jobs in his native Portugal, before a third role at Porto brought him his first Champions League title. He then won successive Premier League titles with Chelsea, along with three domestic cups, before adding a second Champions League trophy with Inter Milan.

After that came his first spell at Real Madrid, a return to Chelsea, and then two more Premier League jobs with Manchester United and Tottenham. Mourinho later managed Roma, Fenerbahce and Benfica before returning to Madrid this summer.

In the new series, Mourinho also reveals that he had agreed to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United in 2013, only to reverse that decision and rejoin Chelsea. He eventually took the United job in 2016 and remained there until 2018.