The Second Coming of the galacticos began much as the first ended: with Real Madrid watching someone else win. In 2006, Florentino Perez departed the presidency empty-handed for a third successive season; he returned three years later, spending €258m, but the result was the same. At the start of 2009-10 season, Cristiano Ronaldo was presented in front of 80,000 fans and the club's nine European Cups at the Bernabeu; at the end of it, the European Cup was again on display at the packed stadium. But it wasn't actually Madrid's.

So Perez placed himself in the hands of the man who had won the trophy Madrid like to think belongs to them. No sooner had the final whistle gone on Inter Milan's historic moment than Jose Mourinho was revealing what had already become an open secret: he was on his way to Madrid.

Desperation brought them to his door. Nothing else mattered: Madrid had to win. It was time to seek out guarantees and few offer guarantees like Mourinho. And if ever there was a time to prove that at Madrid, it is now. For the first time, Madrid's galactico would be in the dugout. And, if anyone doubted that the appointment represented a seismic shift, the evidence was there on the very first day.

Madrid wanted a galactic presentation, normally reserved for the stars, not the coaches. They wanted a packed stadium, a beaming coach, and honorary president Alfredo di Stefano doing the honours ­alongside Perez. Mourinho said no. Instead, he appeared before the media in the club's pine-panelled press room. And there, he proceeded to smash the tenets of the ­galactico model out the park, one by one.

But can Mourinho handle Madrid like he handled his other clubs? His champions are in no doubt: the challenges posed by Real Madrid are special ones but Mourinho is the Special One. He has perfected his methodology over his career, always ­correcting, always learning, noting every little detail, and believing he knows how to handle anything thrown at him. Given Madrid's situation, his position is one of virtually unassailable strength. That fact alone makes him more likely to succeed than his predecessors.

Madrid have not won a Champions League knockout tie in six years; in that time, the Portuguese has won the ­competition twice. And, although he insists on flexibility and teams' unique identities, there are constants, a method. "Every club is different," he says. "But the spirit and the approach is always the same. Jose Mourinho will always be Jose Mourinho."

Apart from a huge salary, he made only one demand of Madrid before taking the job: if he was going to do it, he was going to do it his way. No other coach has been extended the privilege. All of which means altering the project itself, allowing Mourinho to remedy Madrid's traditional ills - starting with the obsession with ­signing a galactico every year...

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