“As the manager of Chelsea he heard
far worse on the football terraces. But a
schoolboy’s taunts have finally pushed Jose Mourinho over the edge.

The self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ flew into a rage when his 11-year-old daughter told him about playground jibes that he was not “the best”, it has been revealed.

He found the culprit, a 12-year-old schoolboy, and held him by the hair while he “pulled” his ears, the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha reported.

Mr Mourinho, 44, was then summoned before the headmistress and made to formally apologise to his tearful victim and his family.

Shocked witnesses said the drama unfolded when the former Chelsea boss went to pick up his daughter Matilde from her £6,500-a-year bilingual school in Setubal, near Lisbon, yesterday afternoon.

One told how he watched Mr Mourinho grab Pedro Antonio and hand out his unorthodox dressing-down, and said he was left “speechless”.

Isabel Simao, the headmistress of St Peter’s School, said it had followed a row between the boy and Matilde Mourinho.

She said: “From what I can gather it was just a typical children’s row with children’s words. She claimed her dad was the best but the boy said he wasn’t. It was as simple as that.”

But Mrs Simao was forced to step in after seeing Mr Mourinho’s furious reaction.

“I saw Mr Mourinho grabbing the child’s arm,’ she said. “There was no physical assault in the literal sense of the term. Pedro cried a bit at first and seemed frightened but we calmed him down.

“I asked him several times if Mr Mourinho had punched or kicked him and he denied it. But I knew that Mr Mourinho had also grabbed his hair, as the child has long hair.