An available, high profile manager with a gilded CV casting a large shadow over a former colleague under mounting pressure at Old Trafford. Sound familiar?

It was not too long ago that Jose Mourinho found himself in the position Zinedine Zidane now occupies. For months during his final season in charge of Manchester United, Louis van Gaal could barely move without hearing Mourinho’s name being linked with his job in some form or other. The rumour mill began around Christmas 2015, at which point Van Gaal was in the midst of an eight game winless streak, and by mid-February it was clear the persistent Mourinho talk was getting to the Dutchman.

After a dismal 2-1 defeat at Sunderland, Van Gaal spoke about how football was “not always an honest world” at the same time as clinging to the misguided belief that the Mourinho stories were the work of a Machiavellian media given the apparent reassurances he had received internally that the club were happy with him.

Van Gaal was eventually sacked less than 48 hours after winning the FA Cup in May, with Mourinho, his former assistant at Barcelona and a free agent after his sacking by Chelsea six months earlier, appointed just days later. Football’s worst kept secret was finally official.