Chelsea boss José Mourinho has praised Sir Alex Ferguson for his multifaceted personality, which he is trying to replicate in his own game. Ferguson is regarded as one of the best managers in the game. He stepped down from his role at Manchester United almost 2 years ago.

The likes of Mourinho and Pep Guardiola are trying to take the position vacated by Ferguson. However, Mourinho says that it will take a very strong person in order to replace the Scot, as he had two faces to his game. Ferguson was always known as a manager had immense control over the referees.

The Scot’s fiery reputation as well as the long list of trophies that he has won makes him a formidable force. Mourinho has revealed that Ferguson would try almost everything in order to win a game of football, but he also had another face in which he tried to be as fair as possible. Mourinho and Ferguson came face-to-face for the first time in 2004 when Porto went up against Manchester United in the Champions League quarter-final. Since then, the two have met several times while Mourinho was at various clubs like Chelsea and Inter Milan. Despite his great record in terms of trophies, Ferguson has always come up second best against Mourinho.

“That was when I felt the two faces of such a big man.The first face was the competitor, the man that tried everything to win. And after that I found the man with principles, with the respect for the opponent, with the fair play – I found these two faces in that period, and that was very important for me.In my culture, the Portuguese and the Latin culture, we don’t have that culture of the second face; we are in football to win and when we don’t there is not a second face most of the time,” said Ferguson.