Everything ends somewhere and someday. Jose Mourinho’s time at Porto concluded in an Uefa Champions League final, with the Portuguese tossing his medal away in the manner of a man who knew he would win another in the future.
His time at Inter Milan finished in the stadium that would be his home for the next three years. He won the Champions League at the Bernabeu and decamped to Real Madrid.
Yet one spell at Chelsea has already ended in anti-climax. Mourinho was fired in 2007, the day after a draw with Rosenborg. A second may finish amid a more spectacular sense of everything unravelling.
Perhaps the trip to Stoke City will prove the day a revival gathers pace, the occasion that the most ruthless winner of his generation finally and definitively halted an unprecedented slide.
Or perhaps it will prove Mourinho’s last stand. Given the evidence this season, that seems more likely.
Chelsea won at the Britannia Stadium last December with the physical power, pragmatism and mental strength of prospective champions.
They exited the League Cup there 11 days ago with the fragility of a side who have forgotten how to secure victories.
If their manager departs now, it may be with the ultimate ignominy: Mourinho’s last stand without Mourinho.
The most charismatic, compelling managerial presence of his generation will be confined to a hotel. Whereas the entire Mourinho family attended Wednesday’s win over Dynamo Kiev, a repeat will involve breaking the rules.
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A stadium ban, enforced for his conduct after the defeat to Southampton last month, means the Chelsea manager will be conspicuous by his absence. The spectre of Mourinho will loom large.
The man himself will be nowhere to be seen.
Not since the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting For Godot, will the protagonist have so few lines in a drama.
Assuming Mourinho does not indulge in the sort of vaguely comical skulduggery he did when lasted banned from attending a Chelsea game — he actually came to a Uefa Champions League game against Bayern Munich concealed in a laundry basket — and any motivational team talks will have to be delivered far in advance, any strategic masterplans unveiled before his side set off for the stadium.
It is an impediment. Should Chelsea’s last trip to Stoke be as awkward as the last, when Mourinho was serenaded with chants of “you’re getting sacked in the morning” by the Stoke fans, it may be a blessing. He cannot be a focal point for the taunts.
He has to trust in players who have let him down. Wednesday’s match-winner was a fitting figure: Willian is the sole member of the Chelsea squad to improve this season.
While others have denied they are ringleaders against him or deliberately underperforming, the general trend has been a downturn which has given them an uncharacteristic frailty. This is precisely the sort of fixture that has taken Mourinho to the brink.
A serial accumulator of trophies used to exude an immunity to shocks.
Chelsea lost four of 54 games in all competitions last season. They have nine defeats in 18 this term. They have shown a sudden fallibility against supposed inferiors.
Chelsea have suffered disappointment against Crystal Palace, Everton, Southampton, Liverpool, West Ham and Stoke themselves already.
This is the worst start to a campaign made by reigning Premier League champions. Luiz Felipe Scolari, Andre Villas-Boas and Roberto Di Matteo were all sacked with Chelsea considerably higher up the table. So, indeed, was Mourinho in 2007.
The greats may deserve leeway and Mourinho’s record gives him a cast-iron guarantee of greatness but the usually intolerant Roman Abramovich has afforded him more of an opportunity than his predecessors.
Dismissing the club’s greatest manager twice would represent a statement in itself. So would keeping him.
Saturday’s events could force Abramovich into an invidious choice.
But if it is end game for Mourinho, he is curiously powerless, distanced from the ground where his fate may be determined in what feels a reflection of his growing impotence.
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