Madrid, June 12 (IANS) Real Madrid has confirmed Jose Mourinho on Thursday as its new first team coach with the Portuguese returning 13 years after his last spell at the club.

“The Board of Directors of Real Madrid C.F., meeting today, Thursday, June 11, and presided over by Florentino Pérez, has agreed to appoint José Mourinho as the first team’s head coach for the next three seasons, until June 30, 2029. Jose Mourinho will join Real Madrid on July 13, the day preseason begins,” Real Madrid said in a statement.

The 63-year-old leaves Benfica with Real Madrid paying the Portuguese club a 15 million euro compensation fee (17.3 million US dollars) and has signed a three-year contract until the end of June 2029, reports Xinhua.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez had said Mourinho would be Real Madrid coach if he won last Sunday’s election for the club presidency against businessman Enrique Riquelme, in which he claimed with 65 percent of the vote.

The veteran manager has joined Madrid from Benfica, where the Lisbon club completed an unbeaten run, but finished third. During the only season of what was his second stint at Benfica, Mourinho led the two-time European Cup winners to an unbeaten Liga Portugal campaign, though it was only enough to secure a third-place finish.

Earlier this week, Benfica agreed a deal to appoint former Fulham manager Marco Silva as Mourinho’s replacement.

Mourinho’s previous three years at Real Madrid saw the club win one La Liga title, one Copa del Rey and one Spanish Super Cup during a period where the club was slightly overshadowed by Pep Guardiola’s FC Barcelona. The period was also marked by increasingly difficult relations between the two clubs and their respective players, widely considered a factor in Spain’s early exit from the 2014 World Cup.

During his election campaign, Perez also promised that the club would sign French international defender Ibrahima Konate, who leaves Liverpool on a free transfer, Inter Milan’s Dutch international Denzel Dumfries as well as a 150 million euro signing, which saw Atletico Madrid on Tuesday reject a bid of that amount for striker Julian Alvarez.

Mourinho will start working with the Real Madrid squad on Saturday.

–IANS

bc/