Watch out, it's Mini Mourinho

Referees of the world will not be delighted by the prospect of another Jose Mourinho in their midst. As a fresh-faced six-footer Andre Villas Boas may bear little physical resemblance to his mentor, but his fiery character, unusual route into football and obsession with statistical analysis have led to him being nicknamed 'Mini Mourinho'.

Chelsea's chief scout hit the headlines for the first time in England last week following his angry confrontation with Frank Rijkaard at the end of Chelsea's Champions League win over Barcelona, but the 27-year-old has been an integral part of Mourinho's incredible success since he was first appointed as coach of FC Porto.

When Mourinho was sent to the stands during Porto's UEFA Cup semi-final against Lazio two years ago it was Villas Boas who communicated his instructions to the players, through text messages sent to coach Baltemar Brito in the dugout, a function he repeated by scurrying up and down the Millennium Stadium tunnel when Mourinho was sent off in last month's Carling Cup Final. Mourinho refers to Villas Boas as his "eyes and ears", but he is increasingly taking on the role of His Master's Voice.

It is a sign of the faith that Mourinho has in his young apprentice that Villas Boas is charged with compiling the reports that form the basis of Chelsea's preparation for every game. For all the great players at Stamford Bridge, it is their impeccable organisation that sets them apart from their rivals.

Villas Boas spends four days preparing a four-page report on Chelsea's next opponents which are given to the players two days before the match in question. The first two pages are the same for every position, detailing the opposition's strengths, weaknesses and patterns of play, but the rest of the report is personalised, highlighting recent performances from each player's expected marker and detailing what they should do at set-pieces everywhere on the pitch.

Villas Boas says: "My work enables Jose to know exactly when a player from the opposition team is likely to be at his best or his weakest. I travel to training grounds, often incognito, and then look at our opponents' mental and physical state before drawing my conclusions and presenting a full dossier. Jose is obsessed with detail. He will leave nothing to chance, even if his team are playing against the worst side in the league."

Villas Boas may owe his current position to Mourinho but he was given his first leg up the footballing ladder by Bobby Robson following a chance encounter in an elevator.

When the former England manager became coach of Porto in 1994 he took an apartment in the same block as the Villas Boas family and soon found himself being pestered by a teenage football fanatic.

Robson responded to such enthusiasm in the kind-hearted manner one would expect, talking Villas Boas through his various experiences, giving him lifts to watch Porto train and arranging for him to do work experience with George Burley at Ipswich Town.

With a perfect command of English as a result of his Geordie grandmother, Margaret Kendall, Villas Boas stayed in England to do his UEFA coaching badges as a lanky 17-year-old at Lilleshall, before returning to Porto to spend a year coaching the club's youth teams.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of his accelerated footballing education, though, came when he was appointed technical director of football for the British Virgin Islands at the age of 21, making him the youngest international manager in the world. While Villas Boas's results may have been forgettable - save for a 9-0 defeat to Bermuda in which Shaun Goater scored five times - the experience was anything but and confirmed his desperation for a career in coaching.

After a year spent coaching Porto's Under-19s, he received his big break when Mourinho returned to the club as head coach in 2002. Villas Boas was appointed head of the Opposition Observation Department, effectively the job he does for Chelsea.

Villas Boas appears to possess a similar temperament to his manager, having also experienced the frustration of failing to make it as a player. The Portuguese, whose red hair matches his fiery character, traded foul-mouthed insults with Jamie Carragher during the Carling Cup Final and it was on the basis of his assertion that Chelsea claimed Rijkaard had been talking to Anders Frisk at half-time in the Nou Camp last month.

A colleague from his time at Porto said: "He's the kind of guy who will defend his team to the death. He will be like Mourinho some day."

His ultimate ambition is to follow Mourinho into management and he may not have to wait too long for his opportunity. When he is not travelling Europe on one of his various scouting missions he spends his free time playing Championship Manager, though he could soon be forced to turn the computer off and take a job in the real world.

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