The Chelsea manager tells of how he almost took over from Steve McClaren as England coach – now he would not entertain the idea again for at least another 15 years

José Mourinho reaches for a pen and he holds it about six inches above a piece of paper and an imaginary dotted line. “This close,” he says. The way the Portuguese tells it, he was this close to signing as the England manager in December 2007, to having the job as Steve McClaren’s successor instead of Fabio Capello, who would be appointed by the Football Association.

Mourinho’s first spell in charge at Chelsea had ended on 20 September of that year and he had been at home in London for a couple of months, desperate to work and probably getting under the feet of his wife, Matilde. He wanted to stay in England and, because of the terms of his severance with Chelsea, there was only one position that he could take.

“At that time I could not get an English club because of my contract when I left Chelsea … I couldn’t get an English club in the next two years,” Mourinho says. “I could get the national team but not a club.”

The England job was appealing because of the prestige and Mourinho also felt that he had the support of the players, and not only those from Chelsea. “Lampard, Terry, Joe Cole, everybody, was saying, ‘Come, come, come,’” Mourinho says. “My players said, ‘The guys from Manchester United and Liverpool call us and say to us: Tell your boss to come.’ I had lots of positive things to push me.”

It is fun to speculate how the national team might have fared under Mourinho, who has always admired the traits of English football and, indeed, sought to embrace some of them; he can even say that his sides are rubbish at penalty shoot-outs. It would certainly have placed a different spin on his assessment of the current squad’s chances in Brazil, which he delivers from his role as a Yahoo World Cup ambassador.

But one person stood in the way; one person insisted that the job was wrong for him. It was Matilde and, if her reasoning might have been influenced by the possibility of Mourinho dossing about the lounge during the week, it was undoubtedly sound.

“My wife told me not to take it and she was right,” the Chelsea manager says. “It was the right decision. We are talking about seven years ago … and I cannot wait two years for a big competition. I cannot be spending two years playing against Kazakhstan and San Marino.

“What would I do during the week? I could go to see the players training with their teams, I ask for permission to spend time with them and to have individual coaching with them … I have to work with them, I can improve things. I’m not going to stay at home, I have to travel, I want to see the players, I want to participate in their evolution blah, blah, blah, blah. But in the end my wife was saying: ‘No football, no matches, is not good for you.’

“And she was right. It was not the job for me seven years ago, it’s not the job for me now and I don’t think it will be the job for me in seven years’ time. Maybe in 15 years from now but not seven.”

Back when England were lamenting that 3-2 Wembley defeat by Croatia in November 2007, which scuppered their qualification for the Euro 2008 finals, and one man’s temerity to shelter from the driving rain under a brolly, Mourinho found himself analysing the country’s best players. He remembers there being no shortfall in technical quality or experience and yet he could not answer the question as to whether they possessed the requisite mentality.

“You had Lampard and Gerrard in the best years of their career,” Mourinho says. “Rooney was in the beginning of his maturity. You had a group of central defenders, all of them in the top moment of their career. Terry, King, Ferdinand, Carragher … Carragher was not even selected! He was coming in as the fourth or the fifth [choice]. You have fantastic players and [are] never doing it. Why? I don’t know.”

Mourinho still cannot answer the question and, like many England fans, he prefers simply to accept that anything is possible from the team. “England is the kind of team [from whom] I am always expecting something good but I am never surprised when things go wrong,” Mourinho says. “If England is world champion, it’s not a surprise for me. If England is knocked out in the group phase, it’s not a surprise for me.”

He believes that he is on safer ground in predicting a positive tournament for Wayne Rooney. “Wayne is right when he says this is his World Cup,” Mourinho says. “He’s not a kid any more and he’s not an old player at the end of his career. It’s the World Cup in the right moment.

“He has a role as leader in the team and I think he is ready to cope with this pressure. Maybe the fact that the season was not good for him at United can also play a positive role. He will be ambitious and hungry to succeed.”

Mourinho did not want to become embroiled in the discussion about John Terry’s non-availability – “It’s time to forget John and support Phil Jagielka,” he says – and, in the end, it came down to penalties.

“Don’t speak about penalties with me because I always lose on penalties,” Mourinho says. “The only time I won was in the Super Cup with Inter when we beat Roma [in 2008]. Imagine how lucky I was – Totti missed for Roma! But I lost so many times and, after trying everything, my final conclusion is that it’s what He wants [Mourinho points to the heavens].

“At Real Madrid I didn’t win the Champions League [in 2012] because Ronaldo, Kaká and Sergio Ramos missed [in the semi-final shoot-out defeat by Bayern Munich.] These were the best penalty takers. And with Chelsea in the semi-final against Liverpool [in 2007] it was exactly the same.

“One player who was not on our list of takers was Arjen Robben. He said to me: ‘Put me No1, 100% it’s a goal.’ I did. And he missed. There’s nothing you can do. I keep saying I’m going to win a competition on penalties. It’s going to be a big one.”

José Mourinho is an exclusive analyst for Yahoo’s football coverage. Read his opinions at www.yahoo.co.uk/worldcup