With just about everybody speculating that Jose Mourinho will leave Chelsea this summer, it is hard not to be reminded of the comment of Bela Guttmann, the great Hungarian coach, that "the third season is fatal". Some managers - Bill Shankly, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger - are empire-builders, determined to imprint their mark on a club, to build it in their image and lay down structures that will last long after they are gone. Others are guns for hire, eternal wanderers driven by a constant need to prove themselves again and again. Guttmann remains football's greatest wanderer.

An elegant centre-half in the days when the centre-half was the attacking fulcrum of a team, he was instrumental in MTK's Hungarian title in 1921. The following season, though, Ferenc Nyul, the player he had replaced, returned to Budapest from the Romanian side Hagibor Cluj, and, relegated to second fiddle, Guttmann did what he would do throughout his career: he walked. Like many of the Jews leaving the anti-Semitism of Miklòs Horthy's Hungary, he went to Vienna, which became his spiritual home, a place where coffee-house intellectuals regarded football as just as worthy a subject for debate as literature or politics.

Guttmann joined the Jewish club Hakoah, but opted to stay in New York following a tour of the USA to raise funds for the Zionist cause in 1926. He bought into a speakeasy, and almost lost everything after the Wall Street crash, returning to Europe in 1932 to begin his coaching career, first with Hakoah and then in Holland with SC Enschede. He soon earned a reputation as a brilliant, irascible man with a sharp dress sense and an acute consciousness of his own worth. Temperamentally, Guttmann and Mourinho seem to have been cut from the same cloth.

How Guttmann spent the war is unclear. His elder brother died in a concentration camp, but Guttmann seems to have escaped to Switzerland where he was interned. After a brief spell at Vasas in Budapest in 1945, he found work in Romania with Ciokanul the following year, insisting his salary should be paid in vegetables so as to negate the effects of the food shortages. From there his career took off, although the flounce was never far away.

Guttmann never had much time for authority - indeed, his truculence ended his international playing career almost before it had started: back in 1924, he was so angered by the fact that there were more officials than players in the Hungary squad for the Olympics, and that they had been billeted in a noisy Montmartre hotel better suited to socialising than match-preparation, he led the players on a rat hunt, tying their prey to the doors of the officials' rooms. Later, his time at Ciokanul came to an end when a director tried to interfere with team selection. "OK, you seem to have the basics," Guttmann reputedly replied, before turning and leaving.

Back in Budapest, he won the title with Ujpest, and then took over from Ferenc Puskas's father at Kispest. Puskas had been used to getting his own way and, in retrospect, conflict was inevitable. Matters came to a head in a game against Gyor, as Guttmann, having tried unsuccessfully to calm Mihaly Patyi's aggressive approach, told the defender not to go out for the second half. Puskas advised Patyi to ignore him, and when he did, Guttmann retired to the stand for the second half, read a racing paper, then took the tram home, never to return.

On he went: to Padova and Triestina in Italy; Boca Juniors and Quilmes in Argentina; Apoel Nicosia in Cyprus, and then AC Milan. He had them top of the table 19 games into his second season when a string of disputes with the board led, once again, to his dismissal. "I have been sacked," he told a stunned press conference, "even though I am neither a criminal nor a homosexual. Goodbye." From then on he insisted on a clause in his contracts that he could not be sacked if his team were top of the table.

Vicenza followed, and then, in the aftermath of the 1956 Uprising, he led a team of Hungarian exiles - Puskas among them - on a tour of South America. He stayed in Sao Paolo, doing much to popularise the 4-2-4 formation with which Brazil would wow the world at the 1958 World Cup. By then, though, he was already back in Europe, leading Porto to the Portuguese title as they overhauled Benfica's five-point lead, before jumping ship for Benfica. There he promptly sacked 20 players, promoted a host of players from the youth team, and won the league.

A coach, he said, is like a lion tamer: "He dominates the animals, in whose cage he performs his show, as long as he deals with them with self-confidence and without fear. But the moment he becomes unsure of his hypnotic energy, and the first hint of fear appears in his eyes, he is lost." He made sure he never stayed anywhere long enough for that glint of fear to materialise.

It was in Lisbon he would enjoy his greatest triumphs, although only after signing Eusebio following a chance meeting in a barber shop. That allowed him to play Mario Coluna deeper, and the result was the last great flowering of attacking football in Europe before the coming of catenaccio and cynicism. "I never minded if the opposition scored, because I always thought we could score another," he said. Benfica beat Barcelona 3-2 in the 1961 European Cup final, and retained their crown the following year, coming from 2-0 and 3-2 down to beat Real Madrid 5-3.

At the final whistle in Berne, Puskas, who had scored all of Madrid's goals, handed his shirt to the young Eusebio, a gesture it was not hard to interpret as a symbolic passing on of his mantle. There seemed then no reason to suppose Benfica would not dominate the sixties as absolutely as Madrid had the fifties. Money, though, soon intervened. Guttmann approached the directors and suggested he might be owed a bonus. They replied that there was no such stipulation in his contract, and, once again, Guttmann walked.

Perhaps he had itchy feet anyway - it was his third season at the club, after all - but in that moment of stinginess, the club threw away its future. Guttmann told them they would never win another European title until he was paid his due; 45 years on, and five finals later, his curse holds.

His departure made the front page of the London Evening Standard, prompting Port Vale, who were then looking for a manager after the departure of Norman Low, to snap into action. They posted him a letter that read: "We understand your services are now available and that you would like to come to England. We are interested ..." Guttmann, though, wasn't, and turned down the chance to coach in the Third Division for the Uruguayan champions Peñarol.

There he built a side that won the Copa Libertadores shortly after he had returned to take charge of the Austrian national side, but he was never quite the same after Benfica. Neither was football. More than anybody, Guttmann had built the cult of the manager; the man who took that on most vigorously was Helenio Herrera, whose concept of the game could hardly have been more different. The sixties came to be dominated by Italian defensiveness and paranoia; with Eusebio maturing, it could have belonged to Benfica.

What happens with Mourinho in the summer could be just as significant. He may speak of his love for Chelsea, but the suspicion is that it is dwarfed by his love for himself. He has shown every sign thus far of being a wanderer; the mid-season announcement of his departure from Benfica following the club's refusal to give him a contract extension was classic Guttmann. Mourinho may be difficult and idiosyncratic, but if Chelsea need any convincing of the dangers of letting a genius go, then they should look to the Benfica of almost half a century ago.